Understanding

Witchcraft
and Sorcery
in Southeast Asia
Understanding
Witchcraft
and Sorcery
in Southeast Asia
Edited by
C . W . WATSON AND ROY ELLEN

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII PRESS

Honolulu
© 1993 University of Hawaii Press
Allrightsreserved
Printed in the United States of America
98 97 96 95 94 93 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Understanding witchcraft and sorcery in Southeast Asia / edited by C. W.

Watson and Roy Ellen,
p. cm.
Rev. papers presented at the First Canterbury International
Symposium on Southeast Asian Studies, held at the University of
Kent, Sept. 25-28,1989.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8248-1515-7 (alk. paper)
I. Watson, C. W. II. Ellen, R. F., 1947- . III. Canterbury
International Symposium on Southeast Asian Studies (1st: 1989 :
University of Kent)
BF1584.A785U53 1993
133.4'3 '0959—dc20 93-5293
CIP

University of Hawaii Press books are printed on

acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Council on Library Resources

Design by Kenneth Miyamoto

 CONTENTS

Preface vii

1 Introduction R O Y ELLEN 1
2 The Relativity of Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand
Louis G O L O M B 27
3 Witchcraft, Sorcery, Fortune, and Misfortune among Lisu
Highlanders of Northern Thailand E. PAUL DURRENBERGER 47
4 Witches, Fortune, and Misfortune among the Shan in
Northwestern Thailand N I C O L A TANNENBAUM 67
5 Anger, Anxiety, and Sorcery: An Analysis of Some Nuaulu
Case Material from Seram, Eastern Indonesia ROY ELLEN 81
6 Social and Symbolic Aspects of the Witch among the Nage
of Eastern Indonesia GREGORY FORTH 99
7 Observations on the Practice of Sorcery in Java
RONNY NITIBASKARA 123
8 Sorcery and the Law in Modern Indonesia H E R M A N SLAATS
AND KAREN P O R H E R 135

9 Knowledge, Power, and Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context

M I C H A E L G . PELETZ 149
10 Return to Sender: A Muslim Discourse of Sorcery in a Relatively
Egalitarian Society J O H N R. B O W E N 179
11 Perceptions from Within: Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature
C . W . WATSON 191

Author Index 213

Subject Index 217
Contributors 221

v
 PREFACE

T H E INSPIRATION for this volume was the first Canterbury Inter-

national Symposium on Southeast Asian Studies held at the University
of Kent between 25 and 28 September 1989, under the tide "The
Manipulation of Mystical Agency and Explanations of Personal Misfor-
tune in Southeast Asia." Ten of the papers presented at the conference
have been subsequently revised for this volume. An introduction estab-
lishes the parameters of the discussion, reflects upon its themes, and,
where possible, draws conclusions.
The specific tasks which the symposium set itself were fivefold: to
present detailed case studies of witchcraft and sorcery beliefs and prac-
tices for a cross-section of Southeast Asian peoples in societies where
these have been poorly studied hitherto; to bring together different dis-
ciplinary specialists to achieve this end; to examine the bases for varia-
tion and continuity of these phenomena in the region; to see if there is
anything culturally distinctive about such mystical knowledge and its
manifestations in the Southeast Asian context; and to assess what con-
tribution their study might make to our understanding of comparable
phenomena globally. The extent to which this ambitious agenda was
addressed will be evident from what follows, though it is our belief that
the resulting volume serves to fill a significant gap in the existing eth-
nography.
For their generous financial support, we would like to thank the
Wenner-Gren Foundation, the British Academy, and the Centre for
Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Kent. Robert Barnes,
David Hicks, Mark Hobart, Barry Hooker, Leo Howe, Werner Kraus,

vii
viii Preface

and Andrew Turton chaired the various sessions, and it is their compe-
tent management and often stimulating interventions which played an
important part in the success of the original symposium. In editing the
papers for publication we also wish to acknowledge the contribution to
our thinking made by John Bousfield, John Clammer, and James
Danandjaja, and, specifically with respect to the Introduction, by Barry
Hooker and John Jervis. The final responsibility for the Introduction is
Ellen's, though its underlying revisionist positivism has been well tem-
pered in places by Watson's postmodernism. We believe this editorial
tension to have been productive.
C. W. Watson
Roy Ellen
Eliot College, University ofKent
at Canterbury
 1
Introduction

ROY E L L E N

Witchcraft and Sorcery as an Object of

Academic Study in Southeast Asia
IN ACCOUNTS of personal misfortune, beliefs concerning the im-
puted manipulation of mystical agency by other persons are as much a
part of the contemporary Southeast Asian scene as the traditional.
Malign magic and sorcery are reported in the literature (ethnographic,
historical, autobiographical, and fictional) and are part of the routine
experience of villagers and urban dwellers alike. From time to time sto-
ries appear in the press that bear witness to a persisting public concern
with such matters (Lieban 1967:25; Slaats and Portier 1989).1 Yet,
with the exception of a few monographs, such as Lieban's Cebuano Sor-
cery, the subject can hardly be said to be prominent in anthropological
or other scholarly work on the region. And apart from Lieban's
remarkable 111 cases and, in a rather different way, Golomb's work
(1985) on multiethnic curing in Thailand, there is little case material—
at least little which is published or accessible. Instead, accounts of
witchcraft or sorcery are rather general, with few concrete illustrations
of real-life accusations or confessions, or the social dramas that sur-
round them. Barton (1969:65), for example, reports three Ifugao
cases, but all of these are based on hearsay of happenings that occurred
many years ago rather than events witnessed in the field. One is
almost tempted to agree with Mary Douglas, when in desperation she
speaks of witchcraft as a "private obsession of Africanists" (Douglas
1970b:xi). But why should the Southeast Asian literature not contain a
body of coherent analyses comparable, say, with those available for sub-

1
 2 ROY ELLEN

L Lisu (Durrenberger)
S Shan (Tannenbaum)
CHINA T Thai (Golomb)
NS Negeri Sembilan (Peletz)
G Gayo (Bowen)
BURMA ,—r r- K Karo Batak (Slaats and
TAIWAN
Portier)
LAOS" M Minangkabau (Walson)
Kt Kerinci (Walson)
B Banten (Nitibaskara,
Watson)
THAILAND
Luzon N Nage (Förth)
Nu Nuaulu (Ellen)

ACAMBODIAJ South ° PHILIPPINES

China Sea

Pacific
Ocean

MALAYSIA
BRUNEI
0
Celebes Sea

Moluccas
Borneo Sulawesi

o^ r^v)
Seram
Irian J a y a

Sumbawa Flores cs>

tombok Oy

Southeast Asia, showing locations of case studies

Saharan Africa (e.g., Crawford 1967; Marwick 1965; Middleton and

Winter 1963) or, more recently, for Melanesia (e.g., Stephen 1987;
Zelenietz 1981) and early modern Europe (e.g., Favret-Saada 1980;
Lamer 1981; Macfarlane 1970a)?
Part of the reason for this must rest with the character of influential
formative work on the subject. One thinks, for example, of Kluckhohn
and Whiting's Amerindian models in the U.S. tradition, and the
totemic presence of Evans-Pritchard for those trained in the British
school. Certainly, the latter's Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the
Azande provided a powerful exemplar to which other Africanists could
turn. Given this, can we therefore conclude that had Evans-Pritchard
undertaken his researches on the same subject in Malaysia or Thailand
things might have turned out differently? Surely, it is too facile to say
that the situation reflects the way in which European and American
Introduction 3

scholars have determined what the significant research problems are or

the places where influential minds have chosen to do their fieldwork.
We can perhaps draw a parallel example from the study of kinship. It
is well known that Africanists have long emphasized descent in their
models of lineage theory, whereas Asianists have emphasized alliance
(Fox 1967:24; Schneider 1965). It would be absurd to explain this
solely in terms of the predispositions of two groups of scholars, though
it must certainly be partly true (see, e.g., Barnes 1962). But the empha-
ses in the respective literatures go beyond what might reasonably be
construed as constructions put on the text by interpreters, to what
many would regard as objective features of the kinds of societies exam-
ined: the presence or absence of descent groups of a particular kind and
of different material exchanges structuring marriage. It is of some signi-
ficance, therefore, that Africanist studies of witchcraft and sorcery
should have been more successfully applied (even though to some
extent detrimentally) to Melanesian data, where sociological similarities
might predispose us to expect them (Stephen 1987:1-3). The lack of
prominence of witchcraft and sorcery in the ethnographic literature on
Southeast Asia, and the overall low level of accusations compared with
Africa or even Melanesia, also reflects in part its relative absence as a sig-
nificant social problem, its characteristic presentation as a private rather
than a public delict, and that in turn reflects the existence of alternative
ways of dealing with misfortune and conflict.2 All of this finds corrobo-
ration in the relative absence of anti-witchcraft-type movements in
Southeast Asia.3
The treatment of witchcraft and sorcery beließ is another matter alto-
gether. In analyses of African thought, metaphysics, and rationality,
witchcraft has become pivotal (Evans-Pritchard 1937; Gluckman 1944;
Horton 1967), though it is ironically true that it inspired a generation
of studies emphasizing the sociology of accusation at the expense of the
structure of belief (Crick 1976:109-227; Douglas 1970c:xiv). In dis-
cussions of the cultural construction of thought in Southeast Asia the
emphasis has inclined more toward other concepts held to be central in
systems of belief and causality, such as Malay semmgat, vital mystical
force (Endicott 1970; Skeat 1900), or adat, in one of its senses,
"sacred"; on some framework held to organize cosmological ideas,
such as symbolic dualism; or ideas derived from the locally dominant
major traditions, such as Buddhist karma. Where we do find mentions
of witchcraft and sorcery—at least in the older writing—it is as a foot-
note to illustrate the backwardness and primitive character, and indeed
the "savagery," of indigenous thought. Thus, for W. W. Skeat, much
4 ROY E L L E N

influenced by Tylor and A. C. Haddon (and almost certainly, though

indirectly, Frazer), though semavgat was not to be explained in terms of
"gibberish theory," it was not inappropriately described as " a species of
thumbling" (Gullick 1988:131,140-142, n80, n93, n95; HoodSalleh
1984:viii). A preoccupation with such matters emerges, too, in Dutch
and English colonial novels and popular literature.
It would seem that the situation described in the previous paragraph
is also related to—on the face of it—a curious absence of reported sor-
cery accusations in the known colonial administrative records in South-
east Asia, and a lack of concern for its possible legal implications.
Anthropologists working in Africa have often been able to draw upon
extensive court and other government records, a consequence of witch-
craft accusation and the employment of magic to harm others being
given official recognition by a colonial administration as a penal offense
(e.g., Schapera 1970:108-109). In some places the legal construction
of the offense outside a colonial context is reflected in the existence of
extensive indigenous trial records (ibid., p. 108), which has sometimes
enabled extensive scrutiny of witchcraft cases brought before local
courts (Reynolds 1963). In Northern Rhodesia it way a criminal offense
to impute witchcraft or sorcery (Marwick 1965:18), and Marwick
(1965:205 and passim) informs us that Cewa chiefly courts were thor-
oughly involved in litigation in this connection. This was not always
the case, as when the establishment of a British Protectorate in 1900 led
to Barotse courts losing their power to try cases relating to witchcraft,
"except with special permission" (Gluckman 1967:60). The African
experience was repeated in the New Guinea Native Regulations as early
as 1935, which, while legally defining sorcery as "deceit," accepted that
it was deceit with unacceptable social consequences and therefore had
to be punished (Zelenietz 1981:12). But in Southeast Asian laws and
court records for the colonial period it barely seems to feature.
The virtual absence of any reference to witchcraft or sorcery in
Southeast Asia in this connection must in part have been determined
by the way in which colonial laws with respect to native subjects were
formulated: formal Islamic law (Shariah) in Malaya, and the complex
edifice of adatrecht in Indonesia, stressing the ideal and eternal at
the expense of the actual and transient (Ellen 1976:317-319; Ellen
1983:50-54). In Malaya, the British were obliged to refrain from polit-
ical interference in religious affairs and anything that might be con-
strued as meddling (e.g., scholarly research). Reliance on Shariah meant
that sorcery accusations seldom came before the courts. In the Dutch
East Indies, by comparison, though the application of adat law was less
Introduction 5

constrained by perceptions of Islam than by modern Western values,

this too may go some way toward explaining the exclusion of references
to sorcery. Thus, in the British- and Dutch-controlled territories of
Southeast Asia, laws against sorcery were never seen, as was the case in
New Guinea (Zelenietz 1981:12), as a progressive tool for social engi-
neering. Although morally reprehensible, malign magic was legally
invisible. Whereas in Africa and Melanesia colonial governments recog-
nized its social importance by making it illegal while at the same time
claiming it to be illusory, the British and Dutch in Southeast Asia
denied its existence in law while consequentially understating its poten-
tial for social disruption.4
With independence, the legal codes of the previous colonial govern-
ments continued to operate. Increasingly, however, postcolonial gov-
ernments and their subjects found that they could not accept many of
the underlying jurisprudential values. This is well illustrated with
respect to sorcery in Indonesia. The Dutch colonial government had
early attempted to foster an enlightened modernism in such matters, as
reflected in the rationalist critique of superstition adopted by the Balai
Pustaka discussed here by Watson. They had, one supposes, antici-
pated that in the fullness of time such education would lead to the
demise of magic. A similar approach appears to have been evident in
the attitudes of postindependence Indonesian administrations, though
in recent years the paradigm appears to be showing signs of dramatic
leakage, almost to the point of moral panic. If ordinary people, as well
as politicians and government officials believe in the efficacy of malign
magic and hold its imputed practitioners to be wicked, then a legal sys-
tem that fails to deal with a pressing social problem is woefully inade-
quate. As Slaats and Portier emphasize, there is a growing readiness
among Indonesian lawyers to hear complaints, and there have been
attempts to change the law so as to make the practice of magic an
offense.
The pursuit of an effective legal framework for dealing with mystical
aggression continues in Indonesia, as indeed it does elsewhere (e.g.,
Zelenietz 1981:12). Understandably, in the context of modern Euro-
pean legal traditions this raises serious problems in terms of the accept-
ability of evidence, as when, for example, claims are made (as docu-
mented here by Nitibaskara) that it is widely assumed that certain
magical practitioners make false claims for their powers or misuse them
to harm others. And when, as in Indonesia, purported instances of
malign magic become media events, pursued and inflated by scurrilous
hacks and a prurient readership, we might reasonably ask—as did Mark
6 ROY E L L E N

Hobart at the symposium on which this book is based—whether having

entered a wider public domain, extracted from their immediate context
and proximate causes, the phenomena have not been fundamentally
transformed?

A Question of Terminology
It is well known that the supernatural harming of others is some-
times considered to be the consequence of an inherent faculty or a dis-
ordered personality, and sometimes the learned and conscious manipu-
lation of objects, spirits, and words. This is the convenient and
conventional distinction between witchcraft and sorcery, confirmed as
such through the definitions of Evans-Pritchard. It is equally well
known that in many cultures the distinction is hard to maintain
and often thoroughly misleading (Marwick 1967:232-234; Turner
1964:318-322).
In some parts of Southeast Asia witches and sorcerers are conceptual-
ized as separate entities and terminologically distinguished (e.g., Lisu).
Whereas witchhood constitutes an involuntary and passive property of
the person, a sorcerer is an active, voluntary participant in an occupa-
tional role. Something like this distinction appears to exist for the Nage
on Flores (Forth 1989) who believe that human beings may be meta-
morphised into witches. But more often than not there are no terms to
distinguish the two, even where (as among the Cebuano) the notions
are more or less conceptually distinct (Lieban 1967:65). Moreover, it is
frequently the case that there is no generic term glossing witchcraft and
sorcery collectively or sorcery as a whole. Rather, we are inclined to find
a number of terms (sometimes a large number) for particular subtypes
(e.g., Barton 1969:63; Lieban 1967:48-75). Occasionally, the term for
a specific subtype is extended and used as a generic (as in Cebuano
bamn0). It is common for the conventional diagnostic features to be
radically recombined. Thus, in the Nuaulu case, while the capacity to
harm others mystically requires an inherited physical trait, it must be
activated through the manipulation of words and objects, and through
consultation with a cooperative ancestral spirit. Balinese ¿^«¿—gener-
ally described as "witches" in the literature—become so by studying
the writings on the subject if they have first acquired a passive knowl-
edge through intense asceticism, and then may only practice with the
express permission of the supreme goddess Durga (Howe 1984:215).
Moreover, sorcery is not universally "black," in the sense that many
accept that harm may be in other respects legitimately caused to pre-
Introduction 7

vent a greater harm, or in the sense that the intentions of a witch or of

magical manipulation may be entirely benign. Witches may variously
be the epitome of evil (as in the case of the Balinese Rangda), may be
inferred as being generally unpleasant from beliefs (such as the Nage
notion that being transformed into one constitutes a punishment
[Forth 1989]), or may be considered irritatingly playful but relatively
harmless (Cebuano). Golomb (1985:96) has described at length the
overlap between love magic and sorcery in Thailand: the former harm-
ful in the sense that it forces someone to act amorously who otherwise
might not wish to, while the latter may well be undertaken to right a
wrong. Practitioners often occupy otherwise socially acceptable and
morally neutral all-purpose roles (Malay bomoh, Thai moo, Javanese
dukun), where any practitioner may have mastered a number of spe-
cialities—bone-setting, midwifery, massage, healing, the purveying of
spells, divination, exorcism, herbalism, sorcery, and so on. In no sense
can these general ritual experts be construed as "gangsters of the super-
natural," to use Stephen's (1987:7) evocative (but one suspects ulti-
mately misleading) description of African sorcery.5 The general point of
all this, of course, is that any assessment of a purported action will
wholly depend on the position of an observer in relation to an accusa-
tion. It is this which determines who the victim is, what the intentions
of the person accused were, and therefore what thoughts and practices
are deemed malign. Events will be constructed and interpreted differ-
ently depending on whether the active self is practitioner, victim,
accused, or quite unrelated to what is going on.
There is no particular reason to believe that in most of these respects
Southeast Asia is significantly different from any other part of the
world. Where we think it is different—though maybe only in degree—is
in terms of the construction of the sorcerer as a facet of the more gen-
eral role of curer-magician and in the existence of sorcery as a part-time
vocation. In other words, some practitioners of this specialized knowl-
edge may make a modest living out of seeking clients and offering their
services for hire, though they may not think they are doing so with
malign intent. This is not, of course, true everywhere. We know that in
some societies sorcerers only exist in the minds of those who accuse
them—that is, no one would ever willfully engage in the craft, or if they
did so, would ever admit it. Thus, Resner and Hartog (1970:375)
found no Malay or outgroup person who would admit to performing
sorcery. Among the Siamese Thais of central and southern Thailand,
tales abound, knowledge is widespread, but locating actual malevolent
sorcerers in quite another matter. But in some Southeast Asian societies
8 ROY ELLEN

persons are prepared to identify with the role of sorcerer, even if they
will seldom—if ever—admit to particular acts. Where this is the case, cli-
ents and interested observers may even form judgments as to the
authenticity or phoneyness of a practitioner (Nitibaskara, Chap. 7).
Southeast Asia is different from Africa in at least one other respect
(though this is also something it shares with Oceania), namely, in that
what we conventionally call sorcery is infinitely more common than
witchcraft, to the extent that sorcery has come to serve as a dominant
paradigm in explaining the use of supernatural agency by persons to
harm other persons. Witchcraft—in its narrow sense—is the exception.
For this reason, we here use the term "sorcery" to include witchcraft,
and only employ the word "witchcraft" in its specific sense as and
when it is necessary to make the time-honored conceptual distinction.
This, of course, is the opposite practice to that adopted by the majority
of Africanists, and those generalizing on the basis of (mostly) African
material.6 But, as with the Africanist consensus, it is only a convention
and does not have the force of an analytical category—as we shall see.

Etiology, Cosmology, and Epistemology

Following Jung and others, it has been plausibly suggested that
the primal character of witch and sorcerer images can only be explained
if we see them as spontaneous creations of the imagination latent in all
cultures. The differences across the cultural continuum are therefore no
more than variations in the way in which the unconscious is translated
and transformed into specific social behavior (Stephen 1987:297). Both
the images themselves and the deployment of images to make sense of
and attempt to alter experience are as much a part of the maintenance
of cosmic order as any other aspect of what we call religious belief. How
the problematic of sorcery and witchcraft is thereafter constructed
depends on whether the subject is approached from the angle of the
practitioner, victim (client), accuser, or some other third party, and
what this might tell us about the representation of power. Having said
as much, it is now necessary to examine whether the categories of
"malign magic," cognate notions of rationality and causality, associated
representations, and terminology are differently constructed in South-
east Asia compared to other parts of the world, and, if so, to see in
what ways this might help to explain the relative inattention ethnogra-
phers have paid to the subject.
All witchcraft and sorcery beliefs seem to be underpinned by some
form of folk-essentialism: the idea that actual attacks represent the con-
Introduction 9

sequence of the existence of some general cosmic power which may be

manifested in various different ways, only a few of which can be glossed
by terms such as "sorcery" or "witchcraft." Thus, the primal mystical
concept in Malay thought, around which all else is imputed to revolve,
has always been represented as senuwgat. We have already suggested that
the ubiquitousness of such concepts may well have been one of the rea-
sons why sorcery and witchcraft as an Africanist or Oceanist might per-
ceive it has been peripheralized in Southeast Asia. But it might be
argued that the mode of engagement between the Orientalist and
native Other does not fully explain what is going on. There are grounds
for believing that in many parts of Southeast Asia the symbolic con-
struction of the cosmos, the social world, and agency support this view.
The notion that sorcery is no more than an aspect of some unitary cos-
mic force appears to have had two seemingly paradoxical consequences:
first, to make it less obtrusive as a separate phenomenon, and second, to
bring it right to the core of the cultural expression of religious ideas.
Thus, Thai shadow-play performers are often suspected of possessing
powerful magical skills—indeed, chaatrii means sorcerer; the main fig-
ure in Kelantanese Malay theater is a bomoh, or specialist in curing
magic; and in Bali the Rangda dance-drama, familiar from its represen-
tations in the tourist trade, is indigenously salient as well.
But while such ideas may theoretically unify sorcery beliefs within
some greater whole, in the lives of most ordinary people the immediate
concern is with agency, how it is that such power—and sorcery is, willy-
nilly, entwined in the exercise of power—can be channeled for malign
purposes. We may distinguish four kinds of agent.

1. The power may be innate in certain individuals, which is what we

usually mean by witchcraft. Such power may be exercised privately or
be apparent in a glance or gaze—the "evil eye." In some places you may
become a witch by killing a witch (as in Lisu), and it is quite widely
believed that the power may be inherited. Where the latter is the case,
and where descent arrangements permit, it is not surprising that we
occasionally come across witch clans and lineages as described for the
Lisu by Paul Durrenberger (Chap. 3; but see also Davis 1984:76).
2. Alternatively, the agent may be an independentfree-rangingspirit
that is harnessed by a sorcerer for the purpose. There appears to be a
wide consensus within Southeast Asia as to which spirits are particu-
larly suitable, often those of a stillborn child or of a person who has
died a violent death. The borderline between these first two kinds of
agent may not always be clear, and some peoples (e.g., the Nage) treat
witches as a special kind of spirit.
10 ROY ELLEN

3. Third, the power may be harnessed through the direct manipu-

lation of objects, characteristically personal leavings, images of the
intended victim, and animals. Where animals are involved, these are
usually insects—e.g., Cebuano barang, which are regarded as being able
to enter the body (Lieban 1967:1). This is similar to Malay bajang, con-
jured up from the newly dug grave of a stillborn child, fed in a stop-
pered container, and released when required. These may take the form
of particular animals, including insects (Winstedt 1961:25). Alter-
natively, as in Ifugao ayak (soul-stealing), it is the soul of the victim
which is metamorphosed into an insect, in order that it may be more
easily trapped to drink rice wine and imprisoned in a bamboo container
to bring on death.

Evidence of overlap between elements (1) and (3) is common, as in

the Balinese belief that many witches (for example, the leyak) may actu-
ally be animals, while many witches and sorcerers are thought to turn
into animals to perform their work. It is not surprising that sorcery
should be seen to act through animals—and particularly through insects
and birds—as in the absence of a germ theory they provide a material
explanation of infection across space and time, a means of physically
connecting sorcerer with victim. Where there is no such physical trace,
the active agent of sorcery is often represented as wind. In Thai, this
is, appropriately, also the most common word for illness (Golomb
1985:138). Among the Cebuano (Lieban 1967:148) germs and para-
sites are sometimes conceptualized as the potential disease-inflicting
instruments of sorcerers.

4. Fourth, the power may come through utterance of certain words

and spells. Attack through utterance alone (especially when it is public)
is, of course, a curse; but in most cases it is believed that effective sor-
cery entails some combination of these various elements. The precise
combination is extremely variable, and it is this which hampers the dis-
covery of convenient cross-cultural typologies.

There is variation in the extent to which sorcery is regarded as evil.

Everywhere it is associated with bad death, but a bad death is not nec-
essarily a consequence of evildoing. Any death of a Nuaulu child is a
bad death, but its cause may be reckoned as ancestral retribution for
failure to attend to some ritual particular. Ancestors who act in this way
are not evil, they are simply acting as one would expect them to act in
the circumstances: ensuring that proper cosmological order is main-
tained by exerting sanctions on the living. Similarly, the Nuaulu sor-
cerer is not intrinsically evil, just powerful; and the morality or legiti-
Introduction 11

macy of a putative act of sorcery must be evaluated according to its con-

text; it cannot be legislated for in advance. After the same fashion,
some Cebuano regard witchcraft and sorcery simply as "different, not
natural"; and Cebuano witches such as buyagan (as opposed to sorcer-
ers—and despite Christian influence—are thought to be relatively
benign. Often, they are considered to be not deliberately malicious, to
cause only minor ailments such as skin complaints, and to be as much
victims as those whom they purportedly attack. For many Thai, sorcery
accusations are a matter for embarrassment rather than anger.
Elsewhere sorcery is definitely evil. What all o f the religious tradi-
tions have in common is the conceptual opposition o f sorcery to all
that is normal and good. On Bali, witchcraft is associated with the god-
dess Durga (the demonic form o f Uma, who is in turn the consort of
Siwa), the personification o f evil and Bali's chief léyak. Witches are
opposed to the way o f the gods and righteous people, and are chroni-
cally disposed to be greedy, jealous, angry, malevolent, and thoroughly
obnoxious. Moreover, structurally, they are the opposite o f all that is
normal: they are associated with the left rather than right, night rather
than the day, animal rather than human; they dance upside down on
graves at midnight and enjoy everything ordinary Balinese find revolt-
ing (Howe 1984:212-217). In such cases, heavy punishment o f a sor-
cerer for alleged misdeeds is often felt necessary, as among the Batak
(Slaats and Portier 1989), and we might well expect pressure on the
state to provide a legal mechanism to satisfy moral outrage.

Malign Magic and the Major Religious Traditions

I f it were ever so, it is now no longer tenable to claim an intrinsic
connection between witchcraft or sorcery and animism, or even "prim-
itive" thought. Abundant comparative ethnographic and historical
data attest to the importance o f such beliefs in Christian, Muslim, Bud-
dhist, and Hindu contexts. Moreover, some o f the finest studies of the
subject are of societies much influenced by, in particular, Christian
beliefs: from Africa (Crawford 1967; Marwick 1965), Europe (Baroja
1964; Favret-Saada 1980; Larner 1981; Macfarlane 1970b), and from
Southeast Asia (Lieban 1967). It is, however, necessary to ask whether
belief in canonical religions has any general effect on the expression o f
witchcraft or sorcery beliefs, and whether assimilation into particular
religions has any particular consequences.
It is now absolutely clear that social change itself may prompt an
increase in accusations, and that religious change is an indivisible part o f
12 ROY E L L E N

this. But in terms of the dynamics of interacting belief systems, an

encounter with any religion with exclusive claims and moral authority
would seem either to force witchcraft beliefs into the inferior and
adversarial complement of a dualistic moral order or to encourage fur-
ther such dualistic notions as might already exist. Thus the spirits
with which Cebuano sorcerers engage are characterized as followers of
Satan, and sorcery as the work of the Devil (Lieban 1967:21). Healers
treat sorcery as a confrontation between G o d and the Devil where his-
torically Christian missions have defined spirits of the pagan religious
world as representations of the Devil. The Cebuano invokes ingkanto
for sorcery, God or the Saints for healing (p. 40). Indeed, the Cebuano
ethnography suggests a movement from beliefs where sorcerers ma-
nipulate various free-ranging spiritual forces to one where they are
regarded as entering into a compact with the personification of evil (cf.
Larner 1984:80). Such a transition is obviously aided where there are
preexisting beliefs in a compact with individual spirits (Cebuano,
Nuaulu), and it is tempting to conclude that wherever institutionalized
religion has to cope with the anarchy presented by sorcery, it does so by
seeing it as an aspect of the action of some general personalized singular
evil force, or gods in pantheistic religions. Thus, Durga enters into a
compact with certain Balinese sorcerers, as Diana and Hecate are
reputed to have done in classical times (Baroja 1964:39-450).
Unfortunately, the picture is not always so clear-cut. Thus, some
Cebuano sorcerers will sorcerize for others, saying that "life is pre-
cious" or that " i t is God's c o m m a n d " (ibid., p. 28). Cebuano healers
are regarded as having access to God's power (ibid., pp. 32-33), the
implication being that G o d allows sorcery to work. Indeed, viewed
globally, Christian theology seems simultaneously to deny the ontolo-
gical possibility of malign magic while attempting to control (forbid) it
in the real world.
The position is not dissimilar among Muslims. Thus, some Thai
Muslims (especially reformists) follow the Koran in saying that all spirits
are a manifestation of Satan, while others say that this is only true for
some, and still others claim that even spirits performing errands for sor-
cerers can be champions o f Muslim piety by, for example, refusing to
possess haram Buddhists (Golomb 1985:217). Golomb reports that
members of opposing Muslim factions may occasionally employ (usu-
ally a Thai) Buddhist sorcerer against each other (ibid., p. 16). Despite
the forbidding of such practices by some religious authorities, it is an
intrinsic part of the constitution of Islam in Southeast Asian societies.
For, as Bowen demonstrates, the Gayo embed magical beliefs in a dis-
Introduction 13

tinctively Islamic cosmology and etiology, and are happy to construe

counter-sorcery as an acceptable morally neutral return. The Tauhidic
worldview does not attribute evil to a single source, and therefore, in
contrast to Christianity, would not appear to have the same polarizing
effect. Similar constructions could be given for several other societies
described in this volume.
Even so, it would seem to be more difficult for Muslims to reconcile
animism with religious observance than Buddhists, for whom superna-
turalism is almost a morally neutral matter (Golomb 1985:106). Like
Muslims, Buddhists can point to relevant scriptural passages for final
authority on the existence of spirits. In Burma, monks are reported as
being prohibited from dabbling (Spiro 1970:160), though in Thailand
at least they may serve as exorcists, seeking monasteries in regions
where the moral balance is in need of redress (Golomb 1985:213).
What makes such beliefs in sorcery ultimately feasible in such systems is
the relativity of evil, the fact that what is malevolent behavior for one
person is not for another.

The Social Epidemiology of Sorcery

In looking at the significance of sorcery beliefs in Southeast Asia it
is necessary to distinguish between shared beliefs and observations of
specific events. In some places there is little evidence for either. For
example, the Kalinga of northern Luzon are reported to have little
belief in the efficacy of sorcery and find it difficult to take it seriously
(Barton 1949). Monographs and other accounts of disputes and their
settlement, of magic and metaphysics, which we might normally expect
to contain references to sorcery, either contain nothing (e.g., Schlegel
1970) or very little (Davis 1984). But as we have already seen, absence
of reference may have as much to do with scholarly preoccupations as
with anything else. Elsewhere in the region sorcery is spoken of as a
potent cosmic force, but accusations seem to be rare; in other words,
there is a disjunction between belief and practice. This is the case, for
example, among the Nuaulu (Ellen, Chap. 5) and in Bali (Howe
1984:213). If beliefs about the role of malign magic are common, and
part of the explanatory repertoire of most Southeast Asian peoples,
why should specific accusations be so rare? In places both beliefs and
instances of specific accusation are widespread, as in Negeri Sembilan,
Patani, and in the Lao-speaking areas of northern Thailand (Peletz,
Chap. 9; Golomb 1985:114-116).
There is, then—although we may be skeptical of placing too much
14 ROY E L L E N

reliance on the omission of data or on speculative attempts to quantify

its significance—some reason to believe that sorcery beliefs themselves
and the level of accusations are patchily distributed in Southeast Asia.
In this case, what regularities can be discerned in that distribution and
how might they be accounted for? Is it likely that the variation can be
explained everywhere in a similar way? Two things are certain: that we
need to make a distinction between explanations of the incidence of
accusations and the variable character and intensity of sorcery beliefs,
and that variation in significance may have less to do with the cultural
construction of the subject in particular populations than with critical
internal cleavages, the circumstances of individuals within a locality, or
social patterns cutting across ethnic lines.
Before even beginning an attempt to locate social factors that might
explain degrees of incidence, we must establish a set of locally appropri-
ate ethnoepistemological parameters. Both levels of accusation and the
cosmological prominence of sorcery beliefs greatly depend on the avail-
ability of other means of explaining misfortune: the extent to which
nonmystical reasons are acceptable, the perceived function of ancestors,
of a supreme deity, lesser deities, various spirits, and other cosmic
forces. Thus, I have explained the low levels of Nuaulu accusation in
terms of the structural priority accorded to ancestors in coping with all
misfortune. Elsewhere, as among Malaysian Peranakan (Clammer, per-
sonal communication), disinterest in sorcery stems from a systemic
view of evil in which it is not necessary to attribute misfortune to the ill
will of individual persons, as evil dwells in the very interstices of the
cosmos; and where such alternative explanatory paradigms are domi-
nant, sorcery (as on Bali) becomes a residual category.
Our ignorance of how sorcery functions in much of Southeast Asia
would make premature the setting up of typologies that correlate genus
of malign influence with the social profile of those accused and the
structure of the social formation in which they operate. Indeed, given
what we do know, the prospect of ever being able to do so may seem
rather remote. Unlike precolonial Melanesia or much of sub-Saharan
Africa, Southeast Asia has long been typified by extreme ethnic inter-
penetration, complex patterns of cultural contact, and intricate politi-
cal configurations. The kinds of complications that arise are well exem-
plified by brief reference to the classic insider/outsider contrast.
Much of the competent literature on Southeast Asia stresses the
extent to which outgroups are accused of sorcery: Buddhist Thais
accusing Karens (Keyes 1980:6, nl8), Kelantanese Malay accusing
Thais (Gimlette and Thomson 1971 [1939]; Resner and Hartog 1970),
Introduction 15

ethnic Thais accusing local Malays and Thai converts to Islam (Golomb
1985:270), Malays accusing local Chinese (Colson 1971:31; Proven-
cher 1975:142), and so on. But such general statements can be mislead-
ing on several counts. First, we should not confuse general assertions
with specific accusations. General assertions of this kind are, of course,
interesting in themselves, in that they tell us something about how dif-
ferent groups o f outsiders are perceived, but they do not necessarily
reflect lines of social tension. Nuaulu on Seram will, in general terms,
speak of various outgroups as having reputations as sorcerers, but mem-
bers of such groups are rarely encountered and even less often accused
of being responsible for a specific misfortune. Even local outsiders
(Muslims, Christians, Ambonese, Butonese) are not among those most
specifically accused, who tend to be insiders. Another complication
with the ethnic outsider explanation—especially in a comparative
dimension—exists in those ethnically plural locations where sorcerers
are available for hire. Here, although ethnic outsiders may have been
the agents through which a misfortune resulted, these agents are under
the instructions of others—often ethnic insiders. Thus we must distin-
guish views about those who have a reputation for sorcery and those
who are most likely to use sorcery or sorcerers to harm us. Although
the most powerful magic is possessed by those living in the social mar-
gins (e.g., Khymers), in Thailand sorcery is directed predominantly at
members of one's own ethnic group (Golomb 1985:201, 209). In
those places where sorcery is regarded as the speciality of particular
(marginal) groups, the extent of specific accusations may also be
affected by the availability of suitable outgroup practitioners (Golomb
1985:211; Textor 1960).
When accusations are directed inwardly, those accused can be inter-
preted as reflecting obvious structural tensions within the community:
between chief and commoner, contestants in love, cowives or wives
and concubines (Golomb 1985:240); or as reflecting views as to those
who might have resorted to sorcery both because of their power
(Nuaulu) or because of their powerlessness, such as the old Kalinga
women described by Barton (1949).

Sorcery and Social Change

Patterns of accusation and the construction of the subject change
over time. In places where sorcery was once confined to chiefs or other
authority figures it is now available to all; from being a means of con-
trolling the status quo it may become a means of upsetting it. On the
16 ROY ELLEN

other hand, when political centralization and institutional religion

emerge where they have previously been absent, sorcery as an informal
means of egalitarian social control may become a threat to the authority
and livelihood of a priesthood and leadership dependent on orthodoxy,
control of belief, and of other specialists in supernatural matters. The
existence of sorcerers represents a challenge to that power, as they are
autonomous and unpredictable experts in the supernatural. Changes
we see in the constitution of sorcery beliefs in such societies invariably
reflect these contrasting scenarios, particularly in both cases the loss of
the indigenous legitimacy of sorcery practices. It is also possible that as
the role of sorcerer becomes delegitimized, so the roles of witch and
sorcerer merge. Moreover, as has been long recognized, the uncertain-
ties of change may themselves stimulate accusations, and for South-
east Asia there is some evidence that these tend to rise where other
"traditional" forms of social control have broken down and not yet
been replaced by alternatives, usually agencies of the state (Lieban
1967:124), where individual redress and violence are not (or no longer)
socially legitimate (Peletz, Chap. 9), and where traditional political
authority encompassing control of mystical power has passed to a more
individualistic regime where magicians retain social power for nosologi-
cal reasons. This position is exemplified by a comparison of Lombok
and Java by Sven Cedderoth presented at the symposium but published
elsewhere (Cedderoth 1990).
For the modern period, another factor thought to have a bearing on
the incidence of accusation is degree of urbanization. The standard
assumption of the partially informed used to be that urbanization
was part of that process crudely designated modernization which
relendessly undermined primitive beliefs, and of course it is the case
that in many areas sorcery is more important in the lives of rural people
than in those of the urban masses. But sorcery is in no sense restricted
to rural settings. It is clearly alive and well among city-dwelling Indone-
sians and in urban Thailand, where Golomb suggests its high profile
reflects an increasingly competitive social environment. Notwithstand-
ing this, however, Lieban (1967:137), in one of the few detailed empir-
ical tests of whether urban living results in an increase or decrease of
accusations, concludes that in Cebu City at least accusations are less
prevalent pro rata than in the rural areas. He plausibly argues that high
population concentrations may make sorcery more visible to the eth-
nographer, but we should not be misled into thinking that they have
increased as a result of living cheek-by-jowl, greater relative depriva-
tion, or "an increasingly competitive environment." The reason why
Introduction 17

accusations decrease in urban areas, argues Lieban (1967:149), is

because there is greater poverty—and specifically less landed property to
argue over—and fewer obligations to cooperate in economic matters.
The conditions for increasing accusations are met rather in those rural
populations where there remains a strong residue of traditional expecta-
tions but also some erosion of traditional sanctions. If this is so, then it
goes some way to explain the high incidence in those parts of the low-
land Philippines that underwent early structural dislocation and reli-
gious conversion under Spanish colonialism, but (partly as a conse-
quence of poverty) rely heavily on traditional modes of therapy and
coping strategies.
The Lieban hypothesis accounts for the decline of incidence of accu-
sation in contemporary urban settings, but it does not settle the issue
of the persistence of belief, why it should be that sophisticated opinion
formers in developing societies should continue to believe in the mysti-
cal transmission of ill will (e.g., Golomb 1985:205). Our own view
here is that anthropologists have never succeeded inframingthe prob-
lematic properly, happy to reinforce their own rational, Western, and
agnostic prejudices with old Frazerian stereotypes. For if we can accept
that rational thought, modernity, and religious belief are compatible,
then why not witchcraft or sorcery? That witchcraft in northwestern
Europe virtually died out when it did has misled many into believing
that it was an inevitable consequence of that new mode of thought
which accompanied the rise of capitalism and modern science. The
existence and revival of "neopaganism" and witchcraft among com-
puter programmers in Tufnell Park would seem to cast some doubt
upon this long-cherished assumption (Luhrmann 1989).

Sorcery in Southeast Asia and Anthropological Theory

It is two decades since the last major theoretical stocktaking con-
cerning witchcraft and sorcery. Indeed, it is almost as if theorizing had
been effectively abandoned in the early seventies with the publication
of three definitive volumes, all essentially Africanist in orientation
(Douglas 1970a; Mair 1969; Marwick 1970). This impression of aban-
donment may owe something to a feeling of sheer exhaustion after a
decade of active analysis and debate, but we suspect also a degree of cor-
porate professional satisfaction that all the major questions had been
addressed and most of them resolved, at least in the light of what was
then known. But does the apparent consensus of the early seventies
represent no more than complacency, and is it the case that the anthro-
18 ROY E L L E N

pology of sorcery has now to be substantially (if not entirely) recast?

This introductory essay concludes, therefore, by examining the extent
to which the Southeast Asian literature might motivate us to reassess
the underlying theses in this body of work. There are at least some
grounds for believing that, for reasons embedded in both the history of
anthropology and in the ethnography of the region, studies of sorcery
in Southeast Asia might allow for the rapprochement of the various
approaches in a more sensitive way, and go beyond simple structural
and typological explanations.
Theories pertaining to sorcery are generally reckoned to be of three
kinds: intellectualist (sometimes called cognitive) theories; sociological
theories, which explain the discontinuity and incidence of accusation
(these are mainly social control theories); and affective theories.
Intellectualist theories are those whose interest in sorcery is as a win-
dow into certain kinds of worldview, ways o f explaining, "systems" of
rationality. N o t content to ask questions about incidence, they seek to
go beyond this and ask why people should hold such (implicitly
" a b s u r d " ) beliefs in the first place. Until the 1960s, sorcery in South-
east Asia was represented by anthropologists in terms of theories of this
kind, though owing more to Tylor, Frazer, and Lévy-Bruhl than to
Evans-Pritchard. What we have found remarkable in our own survey of
the literature is the extent to which this earlier paradigm (though per-
haps dressed up in fashionably new ways) is still prevalent. One reason
for this may be that Zande interrogative casuistry (why me? why here?
why now?) is not particularly appropriate, as is evident in the remarks
made here by Michael Peletz on Negri Sembilan.
Sociological theories include such well-worn hypotheses as those
which state that fear of accusation prevents people from behaving in
antisocial ways likely to provoke the anger of a witch or sorcerer, or that
people are persuaded not to act like witches lest they themselves be
accused of being one. Such assertions (though they are intuitively
appealing) cannot be effectively measured, and it is never entirely clear
that when different ethnographers speak in general terms of the rate of
accusation, they are always measuring the same thing. It is on account
of this that Ellen, for example, argues for a disaggregation of accusa-
tions as between trivial and significant, on the ground that in cases
where no real attempt is made to identify and pursue an offender struc-
tural explanations are less likely to be as plausible as intellectualist or
affective ones. Measurement is also impaired where, as on Bali, people
are labeled as witches without being accused of bringing about specific
misfortunes, and where people are unwilling to name names when mis-
Introduction 19

fortunes attributable to witchcraft do occur, out of fear of drawing

attention to themselves. But, granted such problems as these and the
general circumspection required when dealing with functionalist expla-
nations, there is a range of more specific hypotheses which can, in prin-
ciple at least, be tested, given suitable quantified data. Certainly, we
should not feel cowed by Turner's observation that witchcraft is a
rather clumsy method of effecting social control, since where it is pre-
emptive it can be engagingly subtle.
Looking specifically at studies in the Southeast Asian field, such
issues have only been effectively tackled in the work of Lieban and
Golomb, both of whom—significantly—have worked in market-ori-
ented peasant societies. By effectively we mean that only these research-
ers have as yet made any serious attempt to supply the kinds of data
required to make any such hypotheses more than just plausible. From
the work of Lieban, Golomb, and a few others, we can extract a num-
ber of hypotheses which suggest, variously, that accusations are most
frequent where sanctions are in terms of minor punishments (and in-
frequent where the consequences are grave) (Golomb 1985:114-
116); where there is no convenient outgroup to scapegoat (Golomb
1985:114); where sorcery is a private rather than a public (criminal)
delict; where no other means of explaining misfortune is structurally
more appropriate (Peletz, chap. 9); and where there is unequal access
to resources, as between town and country. While it is difficult to
prove that any of these hypotheses are valid widely for Southeast Asian
data, it is quite clear that some of them definitely are not. For example,
the idea of the sorcerer as anti-image will not work where an individu-
al's reputation is actually enhanced by the public knowledge that he is a
sorcerer (Nuaulu). In general, the varieties of concrete circumstances in
which misfortune is mystically explained suggest to us that no formu-
laic sociological hypotheses will ever go far in comparative study.
Affective theories are those that see sorcery as a means by which
physically ill or mentally distressed individuals cope with their predica-
ment, or a culture-bound projection of "neurosis," "schizophrenia,"
guilt, or whatever. This approach is usually associated in the first
instance with the work of Clyde Kluckhohn (1944) and Beatrice Whit-
ing (1950), and latterly with Lévi-Strauss (1963), for whom sorcery is a
verbal language for dealing with affliction. In other words, it is an
aspect of that body of strategies which people employ to prevent and
alleviate sickness. In this respect, the identity of perpetrators of misfor-
tune is not always required knowledge, as Peletz indicates for Negri
Sembilan and Lieban for the Cebuano (1967:75-76); and in such cases
20 ROY ELLEN

reform of the law to bring sorcery cases within its orbit is probably
beside the point.
In the context of Southeast Asian ethnography, this highlights a dif-
ference of emphasis that has major implications for theory. The Afri-
canists, for all their interest in modes of rationality, have for the most
part firmly placed the study of witchcraft in the sociology of social con-
trol. This was equally true of the early Melanesianists such as Fortune
(1932), Malinowski (1926), and their successors, and is a ready indica-
tor of the major preoccupations of the anthropology of their time. The
postwar accounts of sorcery in Southeast Asia are linked to a different
problematic and set of practical issues related to the diagnosis and cur-
ing of sickness. The scene had been partly set by the prewar work of
people like J. D. Gimlette (Gimlette 1929; Gimlette and Thomson
1971 [1939]) and Dutch medical officers such as J. H. F. Kohlbrugge
(1907). Colonial practice, contemporaneous anthropological fashion,
and certain apparent features of Southeast Asian societies themselves
did not provide fertile ground for a discourse on witchcraft rooted in
social control. Instead, witchcraft and sorcery reemerged within the
discourse of medical anthropology, which was, significantly, becoming
an increasingly important subdiscipline and paradigm from the late six-
ties onward. Thus, Lieban's excellent case material allowed him to link
up with medical diagnoses for victims in his sample, while he was also
able to show how sensations of sorcery patients, as well as visible symp-
toms of their maladies, may correspond in highly specific ways to the
expected results of certain sorcery procedures (Lieban 1967:109). In
effect, he was able to draw together the sociological and medical para-
digms to show that "the frequency with which Cebuanos perceive sor-
cery as the cause of illness or death is a function of their medical situa-
tion and the state of their social relationships" (Lieban 1967:5). He
thus inadvertently takes his cue from Turner's (1964) suggestion that
there might be a correlation between purported instances of accusation
and morbidity.

In their original and unreconstructed form, all of these theoretical

strands have one major characteristic in common: they are literalist.
That is, they start from the assumption that an accuser, victim, and his
or her audience generally agree that describing someone as a witch or a
sorcerer has the same truth value as saying that he is a plumber or a tax
inspector. But what makes sociological analysis difficult is the fact that
witchcraft and sorcery are also widespread sources of metaphors for
talking about other things. The Nuaulu, for example, may use sorcery
Introduction 21

as a means of coping with quite trivial hurts and misdemeanours with-

out ever intending to follow through to an accusation; a particular
choice of words or idiom simply defines and gives moral significance to
an otherwise inexplicable happenstance. The terms are widely part of a
figurative discourse that includes insult and derogation, and that may
have no necessary mystical implication. Moreover, when people such as
the Nage use "witch" as hyperbole, it sometimes makes it difficult to
discriminate "real" accusations from metaphorical ones.
Witchcraft and sorcery in all societies are potent sources of expressive
language, symbolism, and allegory, which (as Watson points out) may
be as important as actual accusations and cannot be reduced to specific
sociological or intellectualist theories. And where this happens it can
hardly be said that witchcraft and sorcery constitute a separate discourse
at all; rather, they provide a repertoire of figures of speech whose signi-
ficance and interpretation alter depending on a particular substantive
discourse or domain. Thus, where we are dealing with specific accusa-
tions with clear histories and consequences we would be well advised to
situate analysis not in some abstract realm of "belief but instead in the
workaday language of, say, land tenure, prestige conflict, commercial
rivalry, or sickness. This is not to concede the arguments of utilitarian
reductionism, nor is it an admission that witchcraft and sorcery are sim-
ply ways of talking about other things. It is rather a recognition that the
phenomena must always present themselves in a particular context and
that, in each of these, literalist and figurative uses of the idiom may
seem equally appropriate. Indeed, some might even be prepared to
acknowledge that they coexist simultaneously. The vital ethnographic
question then becomes under what circumstances might the balance
between the two be said to alter, and how might we interrogate the
boundary between them when the reality for observer and observed
alike must inevitably be construed through metaphor.

Notes and References

1. I say persisting. On 29 August 1903, the Philippine newspaper La
Democracia reported the case of men having been hung for killing a supposed
witch; and Jose Nunez in El Bencimiento for 9 December 1905, has an entire
article on the subject (see Blair and Robertson 1973:43, 311-319). There is no
reason to think that these accounts are atypical.
2. But see Nitibaskara and Slaats and Portier in this volume (chaps. 7 and 8).
3. In only a few contemporary Southeast Asian societies is sorcery regarded
as a public offense. In the past the picture may have been different, at least in
some places. Forth notes that among the Nage (Flores) witchcraft was a matter
22 ROY ELLEN

for public accusation before the imposition of colonial rule, and that organized
witch killing here and in other parts of Nusa Tenggara Timur was associated
with the social trauma accompanying Dutch takeover. Among the Ifugao the
rehearsal of appropriate magic (regardless of its efficaciousness) was sufficient
grounds for inflicting the death penalty, and even a reputation for sorcery
could lead to death on the spot (Barton 1949:64-65). Perhaps, also, the gen-
eral lack of anti-witchcraft movements may reflect the failure of colonial and
postcolonial authorities to enshrine in law an "offense" of malign magic and
thus to promote its negative antisocial image and sanction its organized perse-
cution. This matter is discussed more fully below.
4. The reason for such legal invisibility in the British and Dutch areas of
influence is closely linked to the predominance of Islam. Early Spanish cultural
penetration cast witchcraft and sorcery as the work of the Devil, going some
way toward explaining the higher social profile accorded the phenomena in the
modern Catholic Philippines (see, e.g., the extracts from the Missions to
Visayas, 1751-1765, in Blair and Robertson 1973:48, 113). Similarly, it may
not be entirely unrelated that our best accounts of African witchcraft are from
areas of Christian, not Muslim, influence.
5. In Africa the failure of British colonial law to distinguish between differ-
ent facets of the same role, between curers and bewitchers, resulted in the pros-
ecution of those accused of curing victims and therefore appeared to condone
witchcraft itself (Orde-Browne 1935; Roberts 1935). In New Guinea, both
colonial and postcolonial ordinances established a firm distinction between
malign and harmless magic, thus separating a phenomenon which in many
instances was conceptualized as indivisible into what many Africanist ethnogra-
phers would recognize as "witchcraft" and "sorcery." Similar confusion was
avoided in colonial Southeast Asian law only by ignoring the subject alto-
gether.
6. Although Turner (1964) deprecates the distinction, he fails to offer any
practical advice on how the terminological problem might be resolved or how
we might conceptualize different forms of mystical action.

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 2
The Relativity of
Magical Malevolence in
Urban Thailand
Louis GOLOMB

M A N Y SIAMESE T H A I S in urbanizing areas of central and southern

Thailand continue to believe that people's health, emotions, and
actions are susceptible to magical manipulation by intrusive outside
agencies. Supernatural curers or possessed individuals still occasionally
accuse socially or geographically distant practitioners of malevolent
magic that produces suffering in its victims. While interviewing various
curer-magicians and their clients in and around the towns of Songkhla,
Ayudhya, and Bangkok in 1978,1 had the opportunity to investigate a
few of those accusations during encounters with accused practitioners.
Those suspects whom I succeeded in tracking down denied having per-
formed any malevolent magic. Most of them did acknowledge, how-
ever, that they prepared love or popularity magic for some clients, and
also magic to counteract the malign magic of others or to redress other
kinds of abuses suffered by their clients. But these services, they argued,
were quite ethical, because their primary aim was to promote the hap-
piness and well-being of their clients.
Among the Thais of central and southern Thailand, empirical evi-
dence of the actual practice of malign magic seems to be very difficult to
obtain. This is especially true if by "malign" we mean magic employed
unjustly by a mercenary sorcerer to inflict harm on an unoffending vic-
tim. Knowledge of black magical techniques is widespread; tales of
quasi-mythical sorcerers abound; but locating self-avowed malevolent
sorcerers is quite another matter. Must one conclude that malign magic
is shrouded in impenetrable secrecy? Or should one dismiss most
reports of malign magic as merely fictitious?

27
28 Louis GOLOMB

In this chapter I take the position that the magical manipulation of

others is regarded as malevolent (or malign) principally by those who
perceive or portray themselves as its victims, whereas those who use
magic to influence others' emotions or behavior typically defend their
actions as justified or moral. I shall discuss practitioners' and clients'
descriptions of situations calling for magical input in the management
of interpersonal relations. Then I shall contrast these situations with
those in which people come to see themselves as magically victimized.
Both recourse to, and fear of, magical manipulation reflect underlying
anxieties shared by many Thais about interpersonal relations and emo-
tional stability, especially in the increasingly competitive social environ-
ment of urbanizing areas. Both attempts at, and accusations of, magical
manipulation can be construed as culturally prescribed means for cop-
ing with, and even alleviating, such anxieties. I will conclude with a dis-
cussion of how magical manipulation and accusations thereof, despite
the contrasting moral interpretations of the respective participants,
constitute mutually reinforcing elements of a wider system of superna-
turalist beliefs and practices.

Field Research
My initial investigations of magical manipulation were prompted
by circumstances that prevailed in Kelantan, Malaysia, during a field
trip there in 1973-1974. 1 Members of the small Thai-Buddhist minor-
ity I was studying had achieved notoriety among neighboring ethnic
communities, and especially among the Malay-Muslim majority, as the
most formidable sorcerers and love magicians (Golomb 1978:61-72).
Over a period of fifteen months I watched a steady stream of ethnic
outsiders, often townsfolk from Kota Bharu, flow into an ethnic Thai
village in search of magical assistance for dealing with their social envi-
ronment. Of the several practitioners of manipulatory magic whose
practices I observed, none admitted to being a sorcerer or purveyor of
malign magic. Fellow villagers suspected that two or three of the more
prosperous magicians secretly contracted to provide harmful magic for
clients, but none of the suspected parties ever acknowledged such
activities; nor did I personally witness any malign magic being per-
formed there, though I was informed of occasional requests for such
services from visitors. On the other hand, I observed a wide spectrum
of magical charms being prepared for clients who were seeking ways to
control the hearts and minds of errant husbands, prospective employ-
ers, disobedient children, and the like.
Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand 29

I later learned that concentrations of Muslim minority villagers in

mostly Buddhist central Thailand had acquired a similar reputation as
the foremost specialists in sorcery and love magic. Elsewhere I have
endeavored to explain how people come to attribute superior magical
prowess to such pockets of ethnic minority practitioners (Golomb
1985:194-201). More important for the present discussion, however,
are data I collected on my subsequent field trip to central and southern
Thailand in 1978, when I was investigating the magical services cus-
tomarily sought from ethnic outsiders there. Once again I found large
numbers of people, including many with urban backgrounds, consult-
ing socially distant ethnic out-group practitioners for magical assistance
in manipulating in-group social relations; and once again many of those
same out-group magicians were the frequent targets of sorcery accusa-
tions, though, as I indicated, none would admit to such malfeasance.
Finally, during ten months of 1986-1987,1 returned to Bangkok to
study the supernatural beliefs of Thailand's urban elite. Although sus-
picions of malign magic were far less common among highly educated
Westernized urbanites, occasional cases were reported by such respon-
dents in interviews. Among the less educated, neighborhood mer-
chants still accused competitors of employing magic to ruin their busi-
nesses, and jilted spouses or lovers still portrayed themselves as victims
of malevolent magicians hired byrivals.Defensive measures were taken
by those who regarded themselves as magically victimized. The follow-
ing discussion of magical beliefs and practices will include references to
case studies recorded during this most recent field trip.

At this point a few words regarding my data collection procedures are

appropriate. Although my earlier fieldwork in Malaysia was an inten-
sive ethnographic study of ethnic relations at a single field site, the .two
ensuing field trips to Thailand consisted of more focused interviews
with specific categories of informants scattered over much wider geo-
graphical areas. The 1978 study, from which most of the data for this
paper have been taken, attempted to identify variations in magical-
animistic beliefs and practices across geographical regions and ethnoreli-
gious boundaries, and between rural and urban settings. That study
concentrated on interviewing and observing Buddhist and Muslim
practitioners of various magical and medical specialties near four differ-
ent urban centers in central and southern Thailand. Those sites
included Ayudhya and Bangkok in central Thailand, the Thai-speaking
town of Songkhla in southern Thailand, and the predominantly Malay-
speaking town of Pattani in southern Thailand. In all, I succeeded in
30 Louis GOLOMB

obtaining interviews with ninety-seven practitioners, but for the pur-

poses of this discussion, I shall only be citing materials having to do
with services provided by Thai-speaking practitioners for Thai-speaking
clients. Because of the magical/medical focus of those interviews, I was
not in a position to record detailed descriptions of each respondent's
social and cultural background. However, I did gain some insights into
the nature of practitioner-client and practitioner-practitioner networks
extending over wide areas. For instance, it became apparent that people
were willing to travel considerable distances to hire magicians who
would preserve confidentiality after supplying their clients with mani-
pulatory magic.
In each urban center I established contact with vendors in the mar-
kets, taxi or pedicab drivers, tradespeople, and anyone else I could find
who showed an interest in the traditional arts of curing and magic.
Many of these people volunteered the names ofritualspecialists whom
they had personally consulted or learned about from friends. I then
proceeded to visit each recommended magician at his or her base of
operations. Where local dialects posed an obstacle, I hired interpreters
or assistants, but whenever possible I conducted the interviews alone to
encourage more candid responses from my informants. Interviews were
generally open-ended, although I did endeavor to collect some basic
biographical information. Each respondent was queried about the
range of services he or she offered and the provenance of his or her cli-
ents, but not about the actual identities of clients. Some practitioners
were more forthcoming than others in describing their activities. A few
permitted me to examine their casebooks briefly, with the understand-
ing that I would not copy any confidential information.
A major aim of the 1986-1987 study was to determine the extent to
which urban Thais continue to adhere to traditional beliefs about
magic and spirits. In the course of rather structured interviews, respon-
dents were asked to express their opinions about a number of occult
phenomena, including sorcery and spirit possession, and to relate the
details of any experiences they might have had with these phenomena.
Accompanied by one or two Thai assistants, I interviewed some 240
Bangkok residents, including many members of the educated elite. The
focUs of this study was on the beliefs of clients or potential clients of
magicians rather than on the practices of the magicians themselves.
Although my studies of Thai magic were made several years apart, in
different parts of the country, and among contrasting categories of
informants, I believe that these studies have yielded complementary
kinds of data that, when taken together, contribute significantly to our
understanding of the role of malign magic in modern Thai society.
Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand 31

Urbanization and Magic

Before elaborating the nature of the magical services I found being
dispensed and the sorcery accusations I encountered, I shall outline
some changes that are taking place in urbanizing Thai society that are
influencing people's attitudes toward magic. Like many other countries
of the Third World, Thailand has been undergoing rapid moderniza-
tion over the past several decades. According to the 1980 Thai census,
the percentage of the population living in urban centers had grown to
23.6 percent (National Statistical Office, Thailand, 1983). This trend
continues, especially in the greater Bangkok metropolitan area, where
accelerating industrial development and international commerce have
drawn millions of landless workers from both nearby and distant rural
communities. These migrants to the towns and cities bring with them
many of their traditional beliefs in magic and spirits. Among the new-
comers to the urban centers are traditional magic practitioners, espe-
cially those from impoverished areas of northeastern Thailand. Along
with large numbers of magicians practicing in rural communities sur-
rounding the urban centers, these practitioners supply magical services
to the swelling numbers of urban residents who require assistance in
coping with the stresses of their impersonal and competitive social envi-
ronment.
Stubborn physical ailments are occasionally treated by such practi-
tioners when supernatural or magical foul play is suspected, but increas-
ingly accessible public health facilities and biomedical specialists now
handle most organic disorders. Traditional curer-magicians may be
called upon to treat chronic painful disorders or problems identified as
imaginary, incurable, or fatal by modern physicians. Some individuals,
when confronted with the prospect of major surgery, will first consult
traditional curers—both supernaturalistic and naturalistic—for less dras-
tic therapeutic solutions. There is a somewhat greater likelihood that
psychological disorders will be brought to the attention of traditional
supernaturalistic or magical curers. The modern psychiatric profession
remains underrepresented in Thailand, due in part to budgetary con-
straints, and in part to the Thais' fear of mental illness. Many people I
interviewed, even highly educated individuals in Bangkok, described
the shame and stigma associated with psychiatric treatment. Some pre-
ferred to seek uncertain assistance from supernaturalist or magical
curers—like exorcists, spirit mediums, or even astrologers—rather than
consult a psychiatrist and thereby acknowledge loss of mental control.
In traditional rural Thai society, individuals exhibiting depressive,
obsessive, or hysterical symptoms were readily diagnosed as victims of
32 Louis GOLOMB

supernatural aggression, but in the modern urban settings I studied

they were frequently identified as victims of "nervous disease" (rook
pmsaat). The causes of nervous disease are recognized as naturalistic.
Generally the sufferers are people who have failed to cope with the
stressful situations of modern life. They are individuals who have been
faced with seemingly insurmountable problems in making a living, suc-
ceeding in school, or getting along with other people, and who have
suffered breakdowns after having "thought too much" (kbit maak)
about those problems. There are rules for how to suffer a nervous
breakdown in this way, and they must be learned in an urbanized
setting.
In a similar fashion, the role of supernatural aggression victims exhi-
biting abnormal physical or psychological symptoms is a somewhat
conventionalized sick role learned in traditional settings while watching
exorcisms or listening to others tell of them. City dwellers who never
have the opportunity to witness an exorcism or interact with possessed
victims are unlikely to assume such a role. All the cases of possession I
was able to uncover during my field trip in Bangkok involved victims
with rural backgrounds. In sum, where physical or psychological disor-
ders are concerned, diagnoses of supernatural or magical aggression are
much less common in highly urbanized settings than in more tradi-
tional rural settings. Those urbanites who do undergo exorcistic ther-
apy for such disorders often require considerable coaching to fill the
role of a victim of possession or sorcery, whereas traditional villagers
have been culturally equipped to assume such a role more sponta-
neously. As we shall see, accusations of malign magic that emanate
from urban sources are more commonly triggered by otherwise
unexplainable setbacks in individuals' social relations or occupational
careers, and less often by health problems.
To what extent has exposure to cosmopolitan science and technol-
ogy been responsible for recent changes in accusations of sorcery, par-
ticularly in urban areas? The availability of modern biomedical treat-
ment has certainly dispelled much of the mystery that formerly
surrounded many bouts of physical illness. Exorcistic and countermagic
rituals are becoming therapies of last resort. Greater and greater num-
bers of educated Thais have been exposed to Western psychoanalytic
theory and are familiar with such notions as repression, projection, or
the unconscious, and these ideas sometimes influence their perceptions
of certain forms of aberrant behavior. Yet an announcement of the
demise of supernaturalistic or magical thinking, even among Thailand's
educated elite, would be quite premature. My recent efforts to gauge
Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand 33

the growth of magical-animistic skepticism among Bangkok's elite

revealed a reluctance to renounce magical beliefs outright. Interviewees
were frequently familiar with the generalized skepticism of many West-
erners regarding the occult, but they seldom espoused such total disbe-
lief themselves. Even many university professors characterized such
skepticism as myopic, often citing verses from the Buddhist scriptures
attesting to the existence of spirits and the occult. Astrology and other
forms of divination continue to play an important role in much Thai
official and personal decision making (see, for example, Komin 1985).
And, privately, many interviewees acknowledged their belief in the
possibility of spirit possession and sorcery, especially in cases where
their close friends or relatives of rural origin had apparendy become
possessed or had exhibited unexplained deviant behavior. The magical
manipulation of others was considered a very real possibility for many,
even if they had had no personal experience of such matters.

Magical Input in the Management of

Interpersonal Relations
In traditional Thai society, magical specialists have reputedly had
at their disposal a wide assortment of techniques to be used in manipu-
lating other people's emotions and behavior. Spirit-mediums have
delegated their spirit familiars to carry out such missions. Sorcerers have
magically propelled spirit helpers and enchanted missiles into victims'
bodies. Incantationists have whispered powerful charms that are said to
act independendy to alter others' thoughts. Love magicians have
charmed foods to be fed to, or powder and bath oil to be rubbed on,
individuals whose emotions or behavior have been targeted for manip-
ulation. Other love magicians have preferred contagious magic, con-
ducting rituals using the clothing or other personal effects of their
unknowing victims. Herbalists have creatively employed multimedia
metaphors in preparing all sorts of concoctions to be used in mind
manipulation (Golomb 1985:139-145). I have even watched Buddhist
monks meditating to appeal for help from Buddhist-Brahmanistic dei-
ties (theewadaa) on behalf of deserving parishioners who were intent
upon reforming the behavior of loved ones.
In Thailand, just as in other modernizing countries throughout the
world, the demand for magic to treat physical or psychological disor-
ders is on the wane, but not the demand for magic to influence other
people in one's social environment. People contending with rapid
sociocultural change are turning to all sorts of traditional practitioners
34 Louis GOLOMB

for help in dealing with new kinds of social pressures arising from the
growing complexity of modern urban life. In particular, modernization
has given rise to increased competition in such realms of social activity
as courtship, business, and education. While striving for success in such
an environment, many have attempted to manipulate magically those
with whom, or for whom, they are obliged to compete.
Those with whom one is competing for limited resources are said to
be the most obvious targets of malevolent sorcery. People reportedly
hire sorcerers to employ malign magic in stifling business competitors,
competitors for social recognition, alternative candidates for jobs, or
rivals for the attention of a desired person. The alleged aim of such sor-
cery may be to render the competing party unattractive or undesirable,
or to inflict harm on that party by making him or her suffer mentally or
physically. Hearsay evidence, the promotional activities of exorcists,
the testimonies of possessing spirits, and mass-media sensationalism
notwithstanding, I would suggest that such malicious tactics constitute
only a small fraction of the manipulative magical maneuvers under-
taken in Thai society. The targets of most magical manipulation strate-
gies are not despised competitors but those persons whose affection,
cooperation, or support one is hoping to win; and the magical opera-
tions thus performed are perceived neither as evil nor as unjustified by
the magicians and their clients. It is probably the case that more people
have assailed their rivals through gossip and accusations of sorcery than
by hiring sorcerers to execute more sinful and reprehensible acts of
aggression.
What, then, are the most common varieties of manipulative magic
used in and around Thailand's urban centers? According to practition-
ers I interviewed in communities surrounding Bangkok, Ayudhya, and
Songkhla provincial capitals, it is people in search of love or popularity
charms who have been these magicians' most numerous and highest-
paying clients. Insecure spouses and lovers obtain charms to enhance
their mates' or loved ones' devotion to them and to ward off roman-
tic competition (Somchintana 1979; Terwiel 1975:142-145; Textor
1973:176-192). Women make up the majority of the clients of love-
charm practitioners. If we examine the status of women in Thai society,
we can better understand why love magic figures so prominently in the
occult arts of Thailand. Like other indigenous Southeast Asian women,
Thai women have traditionally enjoyed considerable economic power
in both rural and urban contexts (Skinner 1957:302; Kirsch 1975).
Nevertheless, while they exert much influence in the management of
household budgets, family businesses, and even major financial institu-
Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand 35

tions, they have never enjoyed the marital security or sexual freedom
that their husbands have. Polygamy has been officially outlawed, but
large numbers of Thai men continue to practice it with impunity, espe-
cially in urban areas. At the time of my research in 1978, adultery com-
mitted by a husband did not constitute grounds for divorce in Thai-
land, although adultery on the part of a wife did (Engel 1978:174).
Wife desertion has also been a relatively common fact of life in Thai
society, where women's rights have seldom been reinforced with legal
sanctions. Because Thai wives have had little recourse in the past when
their husbands have taken up with minor wives or paramours, they
have frequently resorted to love magic in their efforts to dissolve their
husbands' extramarital or polygamous affairs.
Most of the love magicians' clients whom I met were major (or first)
wives. However, it is a widely held belief among urban Thais that many
clients of love magicians are minor wives or mistresses competing for
the affections and economic support of men who are already support-
ing the families of their major wives (Somchintana 1979:35, 37). Mod-
ern Thai family law, in declaring polygamy illegal, has placed a great
burden on minor wives and their children. Whereas these women
could once claim a part of their husbands' estates for their families, they
no longer have such rights, and their children are now legally "illegiti-
mate" (Engel 1978:168). At all my field sites I also noted people's
(and especially women's) concern about prostitutes who reputedly
employed love magic in place of respectability to win the hearts of
potential spouses or lovers. Only a few consultations of this kind were
mentioned by practitioners, although these sorts of cases are probably
the most often discussed and most feared by major wives and parents.
Suspicion of this sort of magical manipulation leads many people to
approach love magicians or exorcists for help in counteracting magic
presumably being used by unworthy lovers against spouses or relatives
(Somchintana 1979:24).
Thais tend to exercise discretion when consulting practitioners for
love magic or any other kind of manipulative magic. Those who sus-
pect or learn that they are being victimized in this way—for example,
errant husbands—may respond with animosity or countermagic: from
their point of view, they are being maliciously sorcerized. Socially dis-
tant practitioners are recognized as the safest, for they are unlikely to
come in contact with the intended victim or that victim's associates.
Geographically distant members of one's own social group are apt to
be consulted, particularly by highly mobile individuals in culturally
homogeneous areas. However, where socially isolated ethnic minority
36 Louis GOLOMB

practitioners live close at hand, their services are often preferred, espe-
cially by female clients whose mobility is restricted. In a couple of cases
where women had been publicly abused or humiliated by their philan-
dering husbands, and where most of the community disapproved, I did
observe local monk-practitioners preparing charms with which to rein
in the husbands.
Spouses also turn to magic to influence each other's behavior in
other ways. Wives experiment with magic to make their husbands
more industrious or generous breadwinners. One woman I met had
attempted to wean her husband from alcohol through magical manipu-
lation, by mixing charmed herbs into her husband's food. His drinking
had cost him his job, and he had become increasingly abusive. Both
husbands and wives seek magical charms to help reduce the amount of
conflict in their marriages. Husbands may obtain love-magic charms to
stimulate newly wed virgin wives who are apprehensive about sex.
Parents and children may resort to manipulative magic to help bridge
the generation gap. Parents, in particular, request magical support in
order to render headstrong children more compliant with their wishes.
On three occasions I observed parents acquiring magic with which to
influence their offspring's choice of a mate. Other parents use magic to
help direct their child's choice of an occupation. Some try magically to
dissuade their children from leaving home. It is quite common for well-
to-do rural families to employ magic in their efforts to keep urban-
bound children from abandoning the family's traditional agricultural
way of life. The magical objective of still other families is to prod their
offspring to apply themselves more diligently to their studies or work
so that the family's future economic well-being will be assured. I also
know of a conservative mother who acquired magic to alter her son's
radical political views.
Parenthetically, among the most avid consumers of astrological or
other divinatory advice in Bangkok are mothers who seek to monitor
their children's destinies, even when the children themselves ridicule
such practices. Confronted with pessimistic prognostications about
their children's future, they may endeavor from the sidelines to restore
their children's good fortune by following guidelines prescribed by
their diviners. For instance, they might make additional religious merit
or present a particular offering at a designated shrine on behalf of their
offspring. Or they might try to divert their offspring's interest away
from a hazardous career path through the use of manipulative magic.
For some of my informants this sort of magical vigilance was an integral
part of parental responsibility and an expression of parental love. I also
Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand 37

recorded instances of behind-the-scenes magical guardianship by other

categories of relatives, and even by close friends.
Children, too, may seek to bring their parents' attitudes more in line
with their own through the use of magic. Practitioners described young
clients who obtained magical charms for generating parental approval
of marriage or career plans. Some children sought assistance in persuad-
ing parents to grant them greater financial support or larger inherit-
ances. Children, like parents, have also experimented with charms to
aid in restoring family harmony.
After love magic (yrn sanee) the most frequently sought-after kind of
manipulative magic, according to the practitioners I interviewed, was
that which rendered a person more attractive or "popular" (maha-
niyom) in the world outside the family. Candidates for jobs, promo-
tions, or scholarships sometimes acquire popularity magic to help win
the hearts of employers, superiors, and interviewers, respectively. Busi-
nessmen, professionals, and entertainers are known to seek similar
charms to attract customers and clients. There are probably very few
kinds of challenging or unpredictable Thai social undertakings that
have not included some application of manipulative magic at one time
or another. As I indicated near the beginning of this section, however,
a major task facing researchers is to determine to what extent the magi-
cal manipulation of others in one's social world includes direct efforts
to cripple one's competitors without provocation. Most accusations of
sorcery I encountered in Thailand were ostensibly triggered by suspi-
cions of unprovoked magical interference from mean-spirited com-
petitors.

Situations in Which People Are Portrayed

as Magically Victimized
In an earlier paper I discussed three contrasting patterns of sorcery
accusations that have been identified in three different regions of Thai-
land (Golomb 1988). In northeastern Thailand, where the spread of
modern medical facilities has lagged behind developments in the rest of
the country, fatal illnesses and injuries are still sometimes blamed on
sorcery. Because such accusations can have grave consequences in this
region, the ethnic Lao of the area have exhibited considerable restraint
in branding their neighbors as sorcerers, even though knowledge of
malign magic is believed to be widespread (Suwanlert 1976; Tambiah
1970). Instead, suffering judged to be supernaturally inflicted is more
often attributed to independent discontented spirits in the environ-
38 Louis GOLOMB

ment. The separatist-minded, Malay-speaking Muslims of Thailand's

southernmost provinces also continue to diagnose most physical and
psychological afflictions as the work of supernatural agencies. But,
unlike the northeasterners, the southern Muslims regularly incriminate
or embarrass social adversaries by implicating them as sorcerers or sor-
cerers' clients. Victims of sorcery in this southern region typically suffer
from minor disorders but not life-threatening afflictions. The gravest
and most stubborn afflictions are attributed to awesome, independent
nature spirits—such as those of the sea, rivers, or forests—which have
somehow been offended by the victims' actions.
The third group, the Siamese Thai of central Thailand, have been
somewhat less inhibited about assigning the blame for serious afflic-
tions to sorcerers. In the central region, however, the accused sorcerers
have generally been elusive, socially distant figures, usually members of
another ethnic group, who are all but immune from persecution. And
their clients have often remained unidentified. Siamese Thai, as a rule,
have been in closer touch with cultural developments in their king-
dom's capital. Among other things, they have enjoyed a more thor-
ough exposure to the naturalistic great tradition healing techniques of
the Indianized court. Herbal medicine and massage, literate specialties
derived in part from the Indian tradition of Ayurvedic medicine, are
primary components of central Thai curing systems. Lay and monastic
practitioners of these specialties are usually more highly respected than
exclusively supernaturalistic curers, many of whom claim to have
acquired their powers during dreams or through revelation from other
mystical sources. Many of the supernaturalist practitioners I met in
both rural and urban central Thailand were either local female spirit-
mediums or male exorcists from other regions, particularly from north-
eastern and far southern provinces where those specialties command
greater respect.
With increasing urbanization and modernization, supernaturalist
practitioners among the Siamese are becoming more and more marginal
figures. Where they once provided the major treatment alternative,
today they represent only a secondary branch of a complex pluralistic
medical system.2 Their services now focus more on the explanation and
elimination of non-illness-related misfortunes such as failure in business
or romance, and less on the rescue of victims of possession. Culturally
conservative clients still heed diagnoses of supernatural aggression, and
praise the practitioners if their fortunes improve, but accusations
regarding distant sorcerers seldom lead to confrontations between pur-
ported victims and the accused. Instead, the presiding exorcist is
Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand 39

expected to redirect the hostile magical forces back toward their origi-
nal source or to punish the offender(s) with some other form of magic.
Accusations of sorcery may originate in several ways. Perhaps the
most common way in traditional Thai society has been for an intrusive
spirit within a victim of possession to reveal itself as the henchman of a
particular sorcerer who, in turn, was hired by an enemy of the victim.
As I. M. Lewis (1971:88) has observed, this kind of dissociative pos-
session behavior is itself a form of aggression, an "oblique redressive
strategy" that enables otherwise powerless individuals to assert them-
selves. Identifying an adversary as a sorcerer's client can be an effective
way of assaulting that adversary's reputation. Many exorcism rituals in
traditional society have been conducted by local practitioners who are
acquainted with the victim of possession and, perhaps, the accused sor-
cerer's client. The rituals have also included onlookers—usually relatives
and neighbors of the victim—to whom the possessing spirits address
their complaints. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of possession vic-
tims among Siamese Thais have been women, due to their relatively
underprivileged or oppressed status in traditional society. The circum-
stances that have touched off possession behavior among Thai women
are the very ones in which they have found themselves most fear-
ful, powerless, burdened, or constrained. Most often difficulties in
sexual or marital relations have been involved. According to Textor
(1960:331, 336-337), unmarried Thai village women in the throes of
possession have projected repressed sexual desires onto male acquain-
tances by accusing the latter of having sorcerized them with dangerous
love magic. Jealous, neglected, jilted, abused, or deserted wives and
lovers have made up the majority of all possession victims, just as they
have been the most frequent clients of love magicians.
In 1978 almost all of the exorcists I interviewed agreed that the most
common kind of spirit possession episodes among Siamese Thais were
those arising from intense jealousy and animosity between a man's wife
and mistress, or his "major" and "minor" wives. In these cases the
possessed woman strives to gain the sympathy and devotion of her hus-
band and relatives by dramatizing her suffering and at the same time vil-
ifying her rival by implicating her as the sorcerer or sorcerer's client
responsible for her affliction. As an illustration of this kind of posses-
sion behavior, I offer the following previously published account of an
episode I witnessed in Songkhla in 1978 (Golomb 1985:240-241):

A Thai-Buddhist police official brought his ailing wife to the cell of a

well-known monk-exorcist. Both spouses were in their late forties.
40 Loins GOLOMB

This was the third time in twenty years that the wife had fallen victim
to spirit aggression, either by appearing to experience distressing physi-
ological symptoms or by displaying dissociative personality symptoms.
Each of the former attacks had followed the involvement of the hus-
band with a new minor wife. On this occasion the victim was plagued
with mysterious severe pains in her arms and legs—pains that hospital
doctors had been unable to explain or alleviate. The monk, who was
fully aware of the marital situation of this couple, meditated for a few
minutes and then identified the cause of the pains as spirit aggression
emanating from an enchanted object buried beneath the couple's
house. He designated an unidentified female as having hired a sorcerer
to create this spirit-laden instrument of torture. Some days later the
couple reappeared with a doll-like effigy of the wife that they had dis-
covered under their front stairs. During the ensuing exorcistic cere-
mony the monk doused the wife with special holy water, whispered
incantations, and challenged the spirit aggressor to enter her body and
identify itself. Suddenly the wife assumed the personality of a spirit.
After a few minutes of prodding, the spirit informed those present of
its origins. Among other things it specified that it had been sent by the
husband's new minor wife. Shortly thereafter the spirit withdrew and
the wife resumed her normal identity, giving no indication that she was
aware of what had just transpired. Her pains were gone.
This particular episode is noteworthy for several reasons. It demon-
strates how a powerless and neglected wife can reclaim an errant hus-
band, at least temporarily, by engaging him in a search for a cure. Slight
variations of this tactic may prove rewarding time and again. The pos-
session victim also may drive a wedge of suspicion between her hus-
band and his mistress without directly confronting either of them with
her disapproval. A perceptive curer-magician may further the victim's
cause by anticipating the form of scenario required—in this case, sor-
cery arranged by another woman. Note that if a practitioner's diagnosis
should impede rather than facilitate the dramatization of the patient's
problem, the patient may simply fail to respond to that practitioner's
treatment, and another practitioner will be sought. In this instance the
curer paved the way for the disinterment of the effigy under the vic-
tim's stairs (the reader is invited to speculate how it arrived there). The
discovery of the effigy was sufficient proof of sorcery and justified con-
tinued supernaturalistic therapy. Consequently the curer set the stage
for the spirit's seemingly involuntary testimony by conducting an exor-
cistic ceremony. Throughout this sequence can be detected a subde,
collusive dialogue between patient and curer wherein a platform is con-
structed, step by negotiatory step, for the airing of pent-up grievances.

As I indicated earlier, spontaneous possession behavior of the kind

described above is becoming a rarity among urban Thais, especially in
Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand 41

Bangkok. The role of exorcist is shifting more and more from that of
psychotherapist to that of diviner (although a new tradition of West-
ern-influenced folk psychotherapy has taken root in some areas
[Golomb 1985:135-136]). Psychosocial crises are now more likely to
be resolved in the naturalistic idiom of "nervous disease." Contempo-
rary supernaturalist consultations are less commonly the community-
based social events that traditional exorcism ceremonies have been.
Nowadays people who suspect that they may be the targets of malign
magical manipulation go to exorcists to confirm their suspicions rather
than to air their grievances. While practitioners have always been adept
at subtly eliciting relevant details about their clients' case histories, the
burden is now almost exclusively on the practitioner to patch together
convincing causal scenarios. More than in the past, their interpretations
of clients' problems are viewed as only one class of diagnostic opinions
among a wide variety of contrasting professional explanations.
Consider, for example, a public works engineer whom I interviewed
in Bangkok in 1987. He had experienced frequent chest pains for some
time before he finally consulted a cardiologist, who recommended
major surgery. Hoping to find a way around the surgery, he followed
the advice of friends and visited a supernaturalist healer with a distin-
guished reputation derived in part from an allegedly miraculous cure of
a well-known Bangkok lawyer. This practitioner's specialty was the
removal of dangerous enchanted missiles from patients' bodies. The
engineer underwent an exorcistic "operation" in which coffin nails
that were said to be causing his pain were magically removed from his
body. The magician concluded that the enchanted nails had been sent
by a sorcerer hired by a disgruntled former girlfriend. At the time of the
interview the engineer remained convinced that the magician really had
extracted the nails. He also considered his former girlfriend's aggression
a possibility, but he acknowledged that the operation had not reduced
his chest pains. He later underwent biomedical surgery that brought
him relief. This abortive adventure with supernaturalist therapy had left
him uncertain about the validity of this explanatory system, but by no
means had he become a total skeptic. He did not rule out the possibil-
ity of seeking future assistance of this kind.
Not all urban Thai clients of supernaturalist practitioners need to be
persuaded by others that their troubles stem from outside magical
aggression. A Chinese-Thai flashlight distributor I met in a Bangkok
restaurant in 1987 was distressed at the time by the slump into which
his business had fallen. After several years of relative success and pros-
perity, he had recently been faced with a sudden unexpected decline in
orders from retailers. He and his wife had also just completed a bitter
42 Loins GOLOMB

divorce precipitated by his excessive womanizing. The man was con-

vinced that his livelihood was being jeopardized by the hostile magic of
a competitor (rather than by any shortcomings in himself or his mer-
chandise). He had consulted two supernaturalist practitioners, each of
whom had prepared some countermagic against suspected sorcerers and
their clients. One of them had concluded that his estranged wife or
some other disappointed lover had sorcerized him. Neither of these
defensive magical maneuvers had resuscitated his declining sales, but he
had not changed his mind about the cause of his troubles. This case is
representative of several described to me by members of Bangkok's pre-
dominantly Chinese business community. More than one informant in
Bangkok assured me that all of the shopkeepers there were careful to
maximize their clientele by using popularity magic and astrology. There
would seem to be considerable anxiety among them concerning the sta-
bility of their commercial enterprises. And one rumored aspect of the
competition among them is the magical warfare they wage among
themselves, both defensive and offensive.

The Link between Magical Manipulation

and Accusations Thereof
Western studies of Thai culture have emphasized the indirect ways
Thais have found to control other people (Engel 1978:63, 67n7;
Klausner 1972:46, 48; Phillips 1965:185). Delicate or heated confron-
tations are strenuously avoided during face-to-face social interaction.
Bilmes (1977:161) has observed that the central Thai villager "typically
deals with others in an indirect manner, attempting to use intermediate
agencies and to manipulate the forces impinging on the other person
rather than to strike directly at his object." My studies have revealed
how Thais clandestinely employ magic to cement the social commit-
ment of others when they doubt their ability to win or retain that com-
mitment during ordinary social interaction. Piker (1973:56) feels that
central Thai villagers have difficulty forming close attachments with
other people because they never entirely trust others' intentions. Love
and popularity charms, if effective, presumably eliminate that element
of uncertainty in those others' intentions—but they also deprive their
victims of their autonomy.
It could be argued that the Thais have paid dearly for their avoidance
of direct confrontations in favor of behind-the-scenes manipulation of
others. If one is capable of influencing the emotions, behavior, or for-
tunes of others through covert magical means, then one must also be
Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand 43

vulnerable to such manipulation oneself. And if efforts to control peo-

ple in this way are so commonplace, one can never entirely ignore the
possibility of losing one's own autonomy or self-control. When one's
social or emotional life seems to be spinning out of control, it is easy
enough to imagine oneself as the victim of meddlesome others. The
impersonal, competitive, and often frustrating environment of Thai-
land's urban centers affords their inhabitants ample opportunities to
perceive themselves as victims.
Nevertheless, the decline of ostensibly involuntary3 spirit possessions
and concomitant exorcism ceremonies in modern Thai urban com-
munities is having an impact on city dwellers' beliefs regarding malign
magic. Only a minority of today's urban residents ever experience first-
hand the accusations of distraught possession victims whose suffering
has traditionally borne witness to the devastating effects of aggressive
love magic and other types of sorcery. Secondhand knowledge of such
incidents is simply not as compelling. Even belief in amoral manipula-
tive magic must be reenergized from time to time by observations of
desired changes in the behavior of targeted others.

Returning to the title of this chapter, I would like to add some final
comments on the reality of magical malevolence among the people I
studied in Thailand. Magic aimed specifically at harming its target's
health or well-being is undoubtedly performed by some traditional
practitioners, and maybe with considerable frequency. But much of
this magic is characterized as defensive countermagic by its practitioners
and their clients. It is directed toward perceived magical assailants
rather than innocent victims, and is intended only as punishment.
Magicians who admitted such activities to me were usually careful to
assure me that their magical aggression would never harm innocent peo-
ple. In cases where clients might wish to deceive the magician and cause
injury to unoffending victims, the magic would automatically lose its
power. Therefore, if one is willing to take the word of the practitioners,
one is led to conclude that the most aggressive use of magic is defensive
rather than manipulative. Several of the practitioners whom I observed
supplying manipulative magic were Buddhist monks or Muslim reli-
gious scholars. These men only agreed to offer magical assistance when
they were convinced of its constructive purpose. More worldly magi-
cians are much less inhibited about preparing defensive or manipulative
magic. Yet they, too, must worry about karmic or divine retribution.
Most insist that their services, like those of attorneys, are ethical
because they promote the happiness or well-being of their clients. Even
44 Loins GOLOMB

so, most manipulative magic, especially love magic, is prepared exclu-

sively for clients living in distant communities. Practitioners can ill
afford being implicated in the social intrigues of their home communi-
ties. After all, clandestine charms that inspire confidence in clients can
only provoke resentment in targeted individuals should word of these
magical activities leak out.
It would be foolish to deny that some malevolent sorcerers and their
clients exist. In 1978 I talked with a young Thai man who admitted
having used love magic, unsuccessfully, to take unfair advantage of a
young woman who had spurned his advances. The Thai media often
portray hoodlums who terrorize innocent people with the help of
magic. The recipes for various kinds of black magic are public knowl-
edge in the countryside, and perhaps some amateurs with rural experi-
ence dabble in sorcery on their own. Professional sorcerers are legend-
ary for the high prices their malevolent services reportedly command.
Still, I seriously doubt that very much genuinely malevolent magical
activity actually takes place, despite the attention it has received in Thai
folklore, the accusations hurled by those who picture themselves as its
victims, and the efforts of exorcists who detect and dramatize its exis-
tence.4

Notes and References

1. Funding for the field trips discussed here was provided by the (U.S.)
National Institute of General Medical Sciences, the Center for Research in
International Studies at Stanford University, the National Institute of Mental
Health, and the National Science Foundation.
2. This system includes, of course, modern biomedical care dispensed by
public health facilities and private clinics. Other mystical causes of misfortune
are also frequently identified, karma and divine retribution being the most
common among them.
3. The voluntary possessions of spirit-mediums continue to be rather com-
mon even in Bangkok. Most members of the educated elite whom I inter-
viewed had seen at least one of these.
4. I feel obliged to qualify my skepticism here with respect to the practice of
malign magic in Malay-speaking Pattani. There I did encounter two notorious
Malay sorcerers whose magic was blamed for much local suffering. However, in
Pattani, sorcery was not perceived as life-threatening. Neither of these men had
been physically abused, but they were both considered social outcasts.

Bilmes, lack M. 1977. The individual and his environment: A central Thai
outlook. Journal ofthe Siam Society 65 (2): 153-162.
Engel, David M. 1978. Code and custom in a Thai provincial court. Tucson: Uni-
versity of Arizona Press.
Magical Malevolence in Urban Thailand 45

Golomb, Louis. 1978. Brokers of morality: Thai ethnic adaptation in a rural

Malaysian setting. Asian Studies of Hawaii, Monograph 23. Honolulu:
University Press of Hawaii.
. 1985. An anthropology of curing in multiethnic Thailand. Urbana: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press.
. 1988. Supernaturalist curers and sorcery accusations in Thailand. Social
Science and Medicine 27 (5): 437-443.
Kirsch, A. Thomas. 1975. Economy, polity, and religion in Thailand. In
Change and persistence in Thai society: Essays in honor of Lauristm Sharp, ed.
G. William Skinner and A. Thomas Kirsch. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer-
sity Press.
Klausner, William J. 1972 [1966]. The "cool heart." In Selections in a log pond:
Collected writings of William J. Klausner. Bangkok: SuksitSiam.
Komin, Suntaree. 1985. The world view through Thai value systems. In Tradi-
tional and changing Thai world view. Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University
Social Research Institute and Southeast Asia Studies Program.
Lewis, I. M. 1971. Ecstatic religion. Baltimore: Penguin Books.
National Statistical Office, Office of the Prime Minister, Thailand. 1983.1980
Population and housing census. Bangkok, Thailand.
Phillips, Herbert P. 1965. Thai peasant personality. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Piker, Steven. 1973. Buddhism and modernization in contemporary Thailand.
Contributions to Asian studies 4:51-67.
Skinner, G. William. 1957. Chinese society in Thailand: An analytical history.
Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press.
Somchintana Thongthew-Ratarasarn. 1979. The socio-cultural setting of love
magic in central Thailand. Wisconsin Papers on Southeast Asia, no. 2. Cen-
ter for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Suwanlert, Sangun. 1976. "Phiipob," spirit possession with the view point ofpsychi-
atrist [flc]. In Thai. Bangkok: Borpit Co.
Tambiah, Stanley J. 1970. Buddhism and spirit cults in north-east Thailand. Lon-
don: Cambridge University Press.
Terwiel, B. J. 1975. Monks and magic. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies
Monograph Series no. 24. London: Curzon Press.
Textor, Robert B. 1960. An inventory of non-Buddhist supernatural objects in
a central Thai village. Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University.
. 1973. Poster of thegods: An ethnography of the supernatural in a Thai vil-
lage. 6 vols. HRAFlex. New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files.
 3

Witchcraft, Sorcery, Fortune, and

Misfortune among Lisu Highlanders
of Northern Thailand
E . PAUL DURRENBERGER

W H I L E TREATMENT OF MISFORTUNE is routine and everyday, and,

according to the Lisu scheme of things, some misfortunes are caused by
spirits and some by witchcraft or sorcery, accusations of witchcraft are
not common or recurring events. For shamans to be possessed and
diagnose misfortune, for people to make compensatory offerings to
spirits, for individuals to sponsor feasts to call their souls are common-
place and daily events. To comprehend witchcraft among Lisu it does
not suffice to assert its relation to social categories, political chaos, or
change. Rather, the question is what is the nature of their witchcraft
and sorcery conceptions and how do they fit into their broader world-
view. How does it make sense for Lisu to suggest that there are witch/
were-animals or sorcerers?
This prescribes an explication of the logic that makes assertions
about, and practices relative to, witchcraft and sorcery reasonable. In
order to develop a description of this logic it is necessary to move well
beyond the topics of witchcraft and sorcery themselves and contextual-
ize them in terms of other religious concepts, and then to show how
those concepts are consequences of a Lisu logic of social relations that
informs social interaction as well as cultural construction, because,
from the Lisu point of view, interaction with spirits and witches is a
form of social intercourse no different in kind from exchanges with
other people. If the discussion seems abstract and logical rather than
concrete and ethnographic, it is because I am describing aspects of a
logical system rather than a system of practice or set of events. I have
documented the ethnographic basis for this system in numerous writ-

47
48 E . P A U L DURRENBERGER

ings over the past years, and I urge readers who are interested in more
thickly ethnographic description to start with my 1989 summary or the
references cited in the bibliography.
Among Lisu, law, politics, religion, and social relations are all in the
realm of "custom" and are informed by the same logic of power, equal-
ity, offense, retribution, wealth, obligation, reciprocity, and generos-
ity. To understand Lisu concepts and practices of witchcraft and sorcery
it is necessary to comprehend this logic and how witchcraft and sorcery
concepts are situated in it.
The symptoms and etiology of witchcraft and sorcery are similar, the
intrusion of something; but witches and sorcerers are different. Victims
who harbor the infectious witch/were-animal spirit are antireciprocal,
harm others without provocation or reason, and are beyond the logic
of social relations. Sorcerers or incantation masters must learn their
craft and usually use it to benefit others, and their incantations can only
hurt others if their ends are just. Lisu do not distinguish between
malign and beneficial uses of incantations to define sorcery, and sorcery
follows the logic of power and retribution that underlies social rela-
tions.
Some analytical frameworks anthropologists have developed to
understand witchcraft entail assumptions that, following Durkheim,
religious categories reflect schemes of social classification, or, following
Evans-Pritchard, that it reflects tensions in or the disintegration of the
social order. I discuss E. R. Leach's characterizations of Kachin witch-
craft in order to frame a description of similar conceptualizations and
practices among the Lisu of highland Thailand. As an alternative to
Durkhemian speculations of Leach's genre, I suggest that we under-
stand witchcraft from the Lisu point of view.
Evans-Pritchard (1965) distinguished among intellectualists who
asserted the logic and rationality of religion, emotionalists who
described religion as based on feelings of mystery and awe, and sociolo-
gists who supposed that religious concepts were projections of social
realities. Leach (1954) falls in with the sociologists and speculates that,
among Kachin, if superior wife-givers cannot validate their claims to
superiority and inferior wife-takers are in fact people of influence, a
reversal of the expected situation, then wife-takers accuse wife-givers of
witchcraft to expel them from the community and restore the system
to its "formally correct pattern." Leach concludes " . . . i t becomes
clear that the [spirits] are, in the last analysis, nothing more than ways
of describing the formal relationships that exist between real persons
and real groups in ordinary human Kachin society" (1954:182).
Witchcraft among Lisu Highlanders 49

Lisu are similar to Kachin in their cultivation of swidden rice and

poppies and their patrilineal lineages, but differ in their lack of ranked
lineages, ranked feasts of merit, hereditary rank, hierarchic forms, and
supravillage organization (Dessaint 1971, 1972; Durrenberger 1974,
1976c). Because Lisu have sets of ranked spirits which their shamans,
who can see spirits, describe as looking like modern or archaic North-
ern Thai officials, such religious categories can hardly be projections of
social reality, unless it be a Thai social reality, entirely alien to Lisu
themselves, which would defy the logic of sociological conceptualiza-
tions of religion (Durrenberger 1980).
Lisu recognize a contagious witchcraft spirit that can contaminate
those who live with witches, so all witches belong to a single lineage,
most of whom live together in their own villages. The fact that witches
are all of one lineage is a consequence of the conception of how the
malady is transmitted, not that it is considered hereditary. Witchcraft
accusations are not common among Lisu any more than they were
among Kachin (Leach 1954). Lisu sometimes assassinate one of their
fellow villagers, but not in connection with witchcraft, because the
killer of a witch becomes a witch. Factionalism and factional disputes
are rife in any Lisu village, and groups terminate intolerable social rela-
tions by relocating to other areas, but, unlike Evans-Pritchard's exam-
ples, Lisu do not invoke witchcraft as a reason (Dessaint 1971, 1972;
Durrenberger 1976b).
Social change is not a likely explanation for any incidence of witch-
craft or sorcery accusations or intensity of conceptualization since
southwestern China and northern Southeast Asia have been affected by
the waxing and waning fortunes of traders and trade routes for silk, tea,
opium, and other commodities, by the dynastic upheavals of China,
and the fortunes of lowland Southeast Asian kingdoms for centuries.
Unlike Leach, I can make no reference to a pristine past when things
were "really Lisu." Recent upheavals since the appearance of Europe-
ans have only continued a long tradition of change (Dessaint 1980).
Because people use whatever cultural materials are at hand to justify
their conduct, similar actions may be rationalized in a wide variety of
cultural vocabularies. Explanations of witchcraft that rely on the neces-
sity to realign social realities neglect the creativity of our species. If the
point of concepts of witchcraft is to maintain a particular social order, I
wonder, with Sperber (1975), why Kachin or anyone else bothers with
such an inefficient and clumsy method. According to Leach's discus-
sion, they must be aware of the posited sociological relationships, and
could simply assert the "rectification of names," as the Chinese called
50 E . P A U L DURRENBERGER

it, rather than invoke all of the intellectual, political, and social appa-
ratus necessary to impute witchcraft.
Lisu concepts of witchcraft and sorcery are components of a wider
logic of misfortune and practice of curing. Although religious concepts
are no projection of Lisu social categories, they do adhere to the logic
of social relationships. From the Lisu point of view, spirits are part of
the natural world and behave according to the logic of social relation-
ships just as people do, so there is no category of "mystical agency" pr
distinction between the "natural" and "supernatural."
While some Lisu were credulous, most were skeptical, and one
refused to keep an altar. Never did I observe a Lisu being especially rev-
erent toward a spirit, person, or object. Many Lisu challenged the
assumption that spirits exist by saying that they had never seen one and
could not say whether there really is such a spirit or any spirits at all
(Durrenberger 1980). There is no Lisu theology, nor is it proper to
speak of belief. Rather, spirits and power and associated concepts are
parts of a logically ordered worldview. To comprehend witchcraft and
sorcery, then, it is necessary to understand this logic and this worldview
and the place of witchcraft and sorcery within them.
The ideas that follow from Lisu axioms about social relations make
statements about spirits reasonable but do not require the confirmation
of belief. Both skeptics and believers can and do make the same kinds of
offerings in similar situations. Lisu can ask questions about spirits, test
assertions about them, create exegetical commentaries and stories
about them, talk about them to justify actions motivated by a wide
range of interests, believe in them, or not, as their experience indicates.

Witches and Sorcerers

People get the witchcraft spirit (phyiphS) and the were-animal
spirit (phwu sm) by contamination, through close association with
others who have it. The spirit is contagious, as communicable diseases
are according to modern medical thought, except that the minimum
exposure time is three years. The spirit and the person form one entity,
and once infected, a witch " h a s " the spirit and cannot dispose of it. If a
person kills one of these individuals, he becomes infected with the
spirit. No manipulative techniques such as prayers or offerings are
required to invoke the spirit, and the individual cannot control this evil
power. If the person is angry with someone, he may send the witchcraft
spirit to a victim to cause him misfortune, but the spirit may visit mis-
ery on another without the volition of the witch. He may be trans-
Witchcraft among Lisu Highlanders 51

formed into a were-animal and consume human flesh quite against his
wishes. Witch/were-animals do certain things, not because they have
learned to, but because of the infection of the spirit (Durrenberger
1975b).
Lisu hold that all members of the Gwa lineage are witch/were-ani-
mals. Since they are witches, no one from other lineages risks marrying
them or allowing them to live in their villages. Gwa people live in Gwa
villages and marry among themselves—incestuously by Lisu standards.
Otherwise, they are like other Lisu. They exchange labor with people
of other villages and lineages and attend their weddings and feasts. Peo-
ple of other lineages and villages attend feasts and events in Gwa vil-
lages. Gwa have shamans, village guardian spirits and servitors, medi-
cine women, and incantation masters—the whole panoply of Lisu roles
to deal with spirits and relate to spirits and people in the same way as
other people do. Members of other lineages call Gwa shamans to treat
them, and shamans of other lineages treat Gwa.
The Lisu theory of misfortune distinguishes "mechanical" malfunc-
tions of the organism, which can be treated by correcting the defect,
from "intentional" causes, which entail the machinations and pur-
poses of a sentient agent. Among Lisu there is no generally accepted
theory of mechanical disorders—they form an undifferentiated category
of causes—but symptoms for both mechanical and intentional disorders
are the same and can only be finally distinguished by the efficacy of the
treatment, as medicines or other treatments for mechanical disorders
could have no consequence for intentionally caused maladies (Durren-
berger 1976d, 1977b, 1979).
Lisu differentiate a number of intentional causes of misfortune, most
of which cannot be distinguished by their symptoms alone. To develop
diagnoses, people interpret symptoms using the victim's past history
of responses to treatment, other behavior, oracles, and information
gained from spirits when they possess shamans. There are, however,
diagnostic symptoms of witchcraft attack and sorcery (Durrenberger
1971,1977b).
Intrusion of something into a person's body is one class of misfor-
tune of which there are two categories, each with well-defined attrib-
utes and signs: a witch spirit (phyiphS) may invade a victim's body with
or without the volition of a witch, and people or spirits may intrude an
object {tat) into a person's body to cause the victim pain. Always recog-
nized at first as tai, acute stabbing pains accompany the intrusion of
objects. Because humans with special powers as well as spirits can
intrude objects into people, a victim may know that there is an
52 E . P A U L DURRENBERGER

intruded object but not know the source, so the therapeutic actions to
extrude the object and return it to the one who sent it are directed at
both causes. Although people do not usually suspect sorcerers or incan-
tation masters, a returned object will affect the person who sent it as it
affects his victim, unless the victim has truly offended the sender, in
which case it cannot be returned; if a spirit has intruded the object, it is
because the victim has offended the spirit (Durrenberger 1977b).
Witchcraft is evident more in the precautions people take against it
than in the actions to remedy its consequences. These precautions
include discussing at length whether potential marriage partners, espe-
cially those from some distance away and not well known to the entire
community, might carry the infection and defenses against the attack of
were-animals on behalf of newly born infants. As the following exam-
ples suggest, accounts of witchcraft attacks usually attributed them to
retribution for stinginess. When a Lahu opium smoker came to a house
and asked for rice, the only person in the house, a child, gave him
none. When the witchcraft spirit attacked the child, a shaman drove it
away, knowing it belonged to the Lahu because he saw it.
When a Karen opium smoker asked people for opium, they gave him
none; when he asked for oil to burn in his lamp to smoke opium, they
refused. Shortly thereafter, when one of the boys in the house became
sick, people asked where he hurt; he said, "Stomach pain" and could
speak no more. From the fact that he wrapped his fingers around his
thumbs, they knew it was a witchcraft spirit attack and called a shaman
to drive it away. Since the attack was associated with the Karen, people
supposed it was his witchcraft spirit. When people suspected that a
man's new wife was being attacked by a witch spirit, some pointed out
that she had not wrapped her fingers around her thumb, so it could not
be such a spirit making her mad (Durrenberger 1989). On another
occasion, when a witchcraft spirit attacked a woman and people asked,
"Who are you, what do you want?" and she answered, " I am the
Lahu; I asked for fruit, you gave me only a little. I want more," a sha-
man drove the spirit away.
Having returned from jail to find his wife had married someone else,
a man visited A Lei Po to ask for his legal help. Not wishing to become
involved in the dispute, A Lei Po suggested that the man look for
someone else to advise him. Later that evening, when A Lei Po's ten-
year-old son developed a fever, began shouting, bit A Lei Po, and acted
mad, A Lei Po suggested to me that perhaps this man had some spirit
like the witchcraft spirit, since the seizure came close on the heels of A
Lei Po's refusal to help him. The next morning, A Lei Po shouted at
Witchcraft among Lisu Highlanders 53

the man, " I f you have a dispute, do not come to my house. You can
come to visit, but if you are involved in a dispute, I will not give you
food or a place to sleep." Later, A Lei Po concluded that the incident
was not caused by any witchcraft spirit.
Lisu do not lightly accuse others of being witches, because if one
cannot prove such a charge, the accused is defamed and can demand
satisfaction. To prove someone is a witch, the accuser would have to
present the witchcraft spirit in a basket for all to examine, and no one
knows how to do this in such a way as to prove that there is such a
spirit or that a certain individual is contaminated by it.
Lisu reported that when many people died from witchcraft attacks in
one village the victims' families went to the Thai authorities, who said,
" I f this witchcraft spirit is attacking, why do you not catch it?" They
explained that it was like a spirit, but they had to pay compensation to
the people they accused of being witches. For Lisu to bring a case
before lowland authorities moves the dispute beyond the realm of pre-
dictable Lisu custom, beyond the realm of the sociable, and is extreme,
an action akin to feud (Durrenberger 1976b). Following the general
pattern when factions are at loggerheads, the survivors—not, notice, the
accused witches—moved to another village, though later the accused
witches also relocated. Whatever else, this case shows that, among
Lisu, witchcraft accusations do not force the accused individuals to
relocate, do not drive out the witches.
As there was a Gwa village near the one where I lived, after infants
were born, people did keep lamps burning all night and were watchful
of cats lest they be necrophagic were-animals on the prowl for infants to
kill and eat.
While some people have incantations which they may use to injure
or help others, Lisu do not differentiate sorcery as a distinct category of
incantation or use of incantations; they do not classify incantations or
their uses by intentions or results. Unless the victim is guilty of an
offense and the incantation is used jusdy, the object it intrudes can be
returned to injure or kill the one who sent it. A person may pay a fee to
anyone who knows an incantation to learn it, but to maintain its effec-
tiveness, he must observe restrictions such as not stepping over pig
troughs or under women's clothing, which many find too restrictive;
so most either do not have incantations or claim that they have lost
their power. Anyone can learn incantations to stop bleeding, drive
away evil spirits, heal wounds, correct dislocated bones, and make
medicines to treat mechanically caused diseases—medicines with effects
like herbal medicines, only effective because a spirit is involved—by
54 E . P A U L DURRENBERGER

blowing over a cup of water or liquor after saying the incantation, but
women can have only minor incantations.
The more powerful incantations are for sending away witchcraft spir-
its or intruded objects and for intruding objects (tat) into enemies or
making liquor or tea into poison—thus Lisu never drink out of the
same cup after someone else. Men with powerful incantations may
keep the spirit of incantations, the same spirit that makes herbal medi-
cines effective (Durrenberger 1975b).
Consistent with the Lisu fear of being shamed, people are circum-
spect about such powers and never admit to having such incantations.
If one claimed power, and others challenged him to a test, and he
failed, he would be shamed. After he came out of a trance, a shaman
suggested that A Vu Kai make an incantation to drive a witch spirit
from A Lei Po's brother's new wife. When A Vu Kai said he did not
know such an incantation, A Lei Po suspected he was being "small-
hearted" and made an incantation himself. When I asked people about
such incantations, they described the processes of acquiring them, the
uses of them, and examples of their use, but no one admitted to having
such powers. Only as they were used in the course of everyday life did I
discover people's incantations, and because of their reticence and fear
of being shamed by a test, it was the same for Lisu themselves.
One day when I was visiting a man of the Gwa lineage, one of his
pigs returned to the house wounded. He was enraged at the man who
had stabbed his pig and began to prepare to send tdi to kill him. Within
minutes, persuaded that this man would kill the other just as surely as if
he were to shoot him with a shotgun, other villagers came into the
house to mediate, to argue with conviction and fervor that his pig had
repeatedly invaded the other man's fields, and that this was not worth
killing someone for. The man relented after much persuasion, and the
person who had stabbed his pig disappeared for some time.

The Context of Witchcraft and Sorcery

Witchcraft and sorcery are two of a series of Lisu roles for relating
with various kinds of spirits. To understand Lisu witchcraft and sorcery
it is necessary to comprehend how they fit into this system of roles, to
distinguish their criterial features relative to other roles, and to see how
Lisu relate with spirits of other types.
On a ridge overlooking every Lisu village is a house of the guardian
spirit who protects the village and villagers, one of several spirits who
rule, drink, eat, or protect realms of various extents (Durrenberger
Witchcraft among Lisu Highlanders 55

1989). His servitor is selected by divination and is responsible for keep-

ing the guardian spirit's compound in order, time-keeping, announc-
ing biweekly holy days, and arranging village-wide ceremonies for the
village guardian spirit. Like the servitors, shamans (nipha) are recruited
by spirits. If a man begins to act in bizarre ways, people will infer that
the spirits have probably chosen him to be their "horse." While the
behavior of new shamans is channeled and routinized at training ses-
sions, once one has been recruited to the role of shaman, learning is not
a condition for being engaged. The shaman's duties are to communi-
cate with the spirits whenever necessary so people can speak to them as
they ride the shaman, their horse (Durrenberger 1976a), to help diag-
nose illnesses and other misfortunes, separate the souls of the dead
from those of the living after a death, concoct spirit medicines, chase
away evil spirits, and perform other such curative acts (Durrenberger
1975b). Shamans are not wealthier than other people or accorded any
particular respect or prominence (Durrenberger 1975c).
Both the shaman and the servitor belong to spirits and have no
choice, nor is there any contract between the spirit and the person.
Herbalists or "medicine women" (nechi mdjuama) and the "incanta-
tion men" (sorcerers) (yt khwu judpha) have to learn techniques, call a
spirit to live on altars in their houses, and enter contractual relation-
ships with it. The medicine women's knowledge is passed from mother
to daughter, or from female teacher to female student. When a medi-
cine woman has died, her daughter can install her "medicine spirit"—
the same spirit that empowers the incantations of incantation masters—
in her own house to empower the medicines the herbalist prepares to
treat ailments resulting from mechanical causes.
Shamans, servitors of village guardian spirits, and incantation masters
can only be males, while medicine women can only be women and
witch/were-animals can be either. To comprehend this distribution of
genders across these roles it is necessary to understand a further dimen-
sion of the Lisu worldview, a pervasive set of dual oppositions: day and
night, up and down, left and right, male and female, gold and silver,
heaven and earth, nine and seven, large and small, sun and moon,
breath and bones, spirit and human, and soul and body. The set that
includes left, male, day, up, large, sun, breath, soul, and spirit is attrib-
uted power relative to the complementary set (Durrenberger 1978).
The elements of these sets combine additively so that an element
from the powerful set combines with one from the unpowerful set to
produce a neutral entity. Thus, for example, a person in normal health
is composed of a soul and a body combined in such a way that if the
56 E . PAUL DURRENBERGER

soul is subtracted and only the body remains, the individual lacks the
power for continued life unless the soul is returned (Durrenberger
1975a).
Since women and spirits belong to different sets, to bring them
together would create a neutral combination, thus depriving the spirits
of their power. For this reason, women do not make offerings to spir-
its, go inside the compound for the village guardian spirit, or handle
altar paraphernalia (Durrenberger 1971).
By the same logic, more powerful spirits are located above or to the
left of less powerful spirits, spirits are located above people, the altar of
the village guardian spirit is located above the village, the altar for the
hill spirit is located above that of the village guardian spirit, and the
house altar is on the uphill wall of the house, above the people. Lisu
preserve the polarity of spirits to keep them powerful by not introduc-
ing elements from the complementary set and preserve the neutral state
of humans, for if a person moves too far toward either pole, he dies and
becomes a body and a spirit, but no longer a person (Durrenberger
1980).
To manage mechanical events, one attempts to ascertain mechanical
relationships and does not ask questions of motivation and identity,
but to contend with intentional disorders one must discover just which
spirit is involved and what its motivations are. It follows from the logic
of polarities that intentional events should be dealt with by means of
spirits, and mechanical events, by mechanical means. It also follows
that the methods of contending with these misfortunes should be
appropriate to the type of event, so men handle spirit-related events
while women treat mechanical ones. Witch/were-animals involve both
a human and a spirit as a composite entity and are of neutral polarity;
therefore, both men and women may have this spirit (Durrenberger
1975b).
Many intentionally caused misfortunes are not attributed to in-
truded objects but to offended spirits biting their victims. When the
victim discovers which spirit is biting him, what his offense was, and
what the spirit requires in recompense, the therapy is to provide the
spirit with a compensatory offering so it will remove the symptoms
(Durrenberger 1977b).
Some spirits that attack people without provocation are those of
individuals who have died bad deaths, whose souls have not gone to
the land of the dead, where they would receive regular offerings from
their descendants, but roam the earth and receive no offerings. When
they get hungry, they attack people in order to receive offerings, and
Witchcraft among Lisu Highlanders 57

the therapy is to provide the spirit an offering and send it away.

Another spirit that may attack without being offended, and is sent
away from the household and the village if it does, is the spirit of mali-
cious gossip, which hears gossip and reacts by visiting misfortune on
the maligned individual or his household when many people speak ill
of someone. More powerful spirits, who react to offenses, cannot be
sent away. The witch spirit belongs to the group of relatively powerless
spirits and essences that people can send away.

Power and Retribution

To stay alive, a person must have power, the same kind of power
spirits have and the same kind of power that animates witchcraft spirits.
The concept of power pervades the Lisu worldview, as the logic of
polarities and its widespread application suggest, informing not only
relations with spirits and witches but also everyday social interaction.
Retribution is equally important, for if one is deprived of power,
whether he be spirit or person, he will seek recompense, and if it is not
forthcoming, retaliation and retribution. In fact, relations with spirits
are of exactly the same kind as relations with people, and both rely on
power. Hence, to understand witchcraft, we must situate it in terms of
the Lisu logic of power and retribution.
If a person or one of his dependents does something damaging or
offensive to another, he should approach the damaged individual with
liquor, an admission of guilt, and apologize for the action. Then the
two can negotiate until they arrive at a mutually acceptable compensa-
tion for the damages. Often, the offending party does not readily admit
guilt but must be persuaded to admit it before negotiation of compen-
sation can begin (Durrenberger 1976b). Damaging the offending indi-
vidual or his property is a final recourse if no other satisfaction can be
had. Lisu are well aware of the deleterious effects of unchecked self-
help and feud, and this is often used as an argument for reaching some
kind of settlement. If one person offends another, one party can
approach the other; they can discuss the matter and either agree or not.
Because the two parties are visible to each other, there can be proce-
dures for dealing with disputes. That certain spirits can cause disease
and misfortune, and that people can cause them to relent by presenting
them with liquor and offerings, follow from these ideas about social
relations.
One can offend spirits just as one can offend other people, but peo-
ple cannot directly confront spirits and spirits cannot inform a person
58 E. PAUL DURRENBERGER

of an offense and demand compensation prior to taking the recourse of

self-help. A human being only becomes aware of his offense when spir-
its have recourse to the only form of self-help available to them, inflict-
ing misfortune on the one who offended them. Only then can a person
admit culpability by apologizing to the spirit and presenting it with
appropriate compensation.
Witchcraft is one category in a theory of causality of misfortunes.
There is a continuum of power from the spirits whose power is greater
than the upper limit of human power, to human power, to such spirits
as the spirit of malicious gossip and the witchcraft spirit. The human
realm defines a neutral state, while the spirit realm defines a powerful
state, and essences and weak spirits define a weak state. With informa-
tion from spirits, oracles, and past history and their theory of misfor-
tune, Lisu reach conclusions about the relative power of the causal
agent and why the being is afflicting the victim with misfortune. If the
causal agent is a soul or an essence, the balance of polarities is reversed
with the help of appropriate spirits, the soul returned, and the essence
banished. If it is an offended spirit, they apologize to the spirit, offer it
compensation for the offense, and request that it return the victim to
health (Durrenberger 1989).

The Logic of Fortune and Social Relations

Witchcraft and sorcery are the antitheses of sociability and reci-
procity, the central Lisu principles of social relations upon which peo-
ple base claims to power and prestige. To understand witchcraft and
sorcery, it is necessary to comprehend how reciprocity and sociability
relate to wealth and its proper social uses and concepts such as power,
which are central in both the social and religious systems.
The power of spirits is of the same kind but greater than the power
of people. The significant scales of power, reputation, and influence
(du) on which to place people are wealth, fate, power, and blessing. It is
necessary to explicate these ideas in some detail, because witchcraft and
sorcery can be understood only in terms of their place within this con-
ceptual system.
Du is a consequence of effort, the evidence for the state of one's fate,
and a person or spirit has du if he can meet the expectations of others in
all circumstances. Spirits gain power if they take care of their descen-
dants and do what people request of them, but the inability to honor
the expectations of others or to match claims with deeds is shame, sd
tud, for spirits as well as people. If one is shamed, he loses du, hence
people's unwillingness to expose themselves to the possibility of shame
Witchcraft among Lisu Highlanders 59

by claiming great powers in admitting to having spells or being sorcer-

ers. Spirits, like people, lose power if they cannot take care of their peo-
ple when people expect they should. If visitors come to one's house
and one cannot offer them food and drink, one is shamed; if visitors
come and one can offer hospitality but does not want to and does not,
then one is not shamed and does not lose du.
Allotted at birth, fztc—myi—czn be good, bad, or indifferent. If
one's efforts are rewarded, he has good myt, and when myi is used up,
one is dead. There is no way to find out a priori what a person's myi
holds for him, but Lisu distinguish between failure due to laziness and
failure due to bad myt. Blessing, ghh sm, is not innate but is acquired in
the course of social interactions. If one has no blessing, he harvests only
little, is sick, and is not able to work and becomes poor. Wealth, fwu
chi, on the other hand, is the tangible realization of blessing.
Ghh swi is related to the concepts of obligation, chi yi, and the power
of speech, khbjwu. While bad talk itself has no power to harm, if one
never works in the fields or commits outrageous acts, people will speak
badly, and the spirit of malicious gossip is likely to act by inflicting dam-
age and disease. Good speech brings blessing, as when one gives offer-
ings to spirits and they speak well of him, which gives him blessing, or
when one sponsors a feast or builds a bridge, rest house, or path bench
for public use and people give blessing immediately by tying strings on
the beneficiary and, in the future, when they use the structures, by
thinking or saying that the person who made the structure is good,
which also confers blessing. If one has wealth, he can give things to
people and spirits and cause them to have chi yi, to speak well and give
blessing, the fulfillment of which is wealth. With a little wealth, one
can hope to build up one's blessing through generosity and thus
increase one's wealth. If one cannot live up to the expectations of oth-
ers, he loses du (power) and is shamed, but if he can meet the expecta-
tions of others, he gains du. Wealth is at the same time both the result
and an indication of good myi, fate.
Wealth is the focal point of this system. Herein lies a contradiction of
which Lisu are well aware: that one must be acquisitive to gain enough
wealth to be sufficiently generous in order to be powerful, influential,
and successful. The demands of generosity necessitate that, when one
sponsors a feast and kills a pig, he urge guests to eat and drink more in a
setting in which giving confers prestige; but the logic of acquisitiveness
requires that when one kills a pig and sells pork or distills liquor to sell,
he measure it out precisely in a context where sharp dealing is valued
and contributes to one's reputation.
Because all have access to the same lands and technology, wealth is
60 E . P A U L DURRENBERGER

directly related to productivity, not inheritance, and since power, dü, is

a direct consequence of wealth, and wealth is a consequence of effort,
dü is therefore itself a measure of productivity. One cannot infer du
from position, lineage, affiliation, name, or any other such indicator
besides wealth, and wealth is the result of individual productivity.
Lisu recognize the contradictions between acquisitiveness and reci-
procity, as well as the central place of both in their system (Durren-
berger 1989:42). Because witchcraft and sorcery, volitional or not, con-
tradict the logic of prestige and power, one cannot use such antisocial
means to enhance prestige or power. They are the antitheses of sociabil-
ity and reciprocity upon which claims to prestige and power are based.

Productivity, Power, and the Logic of Spirits

Although a central aspect of power is wealth or productive capac-
ity, claims to power must be justified by living up to the expectations of
others, which involves both rights and duties. If one does not perform
one's duties, he is shamed; if one's rights are transgressed, he is
shamed. Any being with power can lose power through its actions or
the actions of others. Spirits must also do what is expected of them,
and shame, the converse of power, is the result of the actions of others;
the being, human or spirit, must demand compensation and may ulti-
mately have recourse to self-help to gain satisfaction. Hence people can
offend spirits, and spirits can cause them misfortune but relent when
people restore their power by offerings and apologies.
Spirits have more power than people. When a person dies, the survi-
vors expend much effort to enable the soul to go to the land of the
dead so it does not linger among his or her kinsmen on earth. The soul
goes to the sky and, by the additive nature of the logic of polarities,
becomes doubly positive; it has more power than a soul located in neu-
tral territory, the earth. After a person dies, his soul becomes a spirit by
the accretion of power entailed in being located "above" (Durren-
beiger 1975a).
Ancestor spirits ultimately become lineage spirits, as they become
more remote from living generations. Lineage spirits look after their
descendants and help people contact other spirits by riding shamans.
Lineage spirits, like others, can be offended and cause people to fall ill
until they make an appropriate compensation. They are represented on
household altars; people feed them and give them regular offerings on
occasions such as giving thanks for the rice harvest, corn harvest, at new
year, and so on, depending on lineage custom.
Witchcraft among Lisu High landers 61

When a person's soul, equivalent to his productive capacities, leaves

his body, he is left without blessing. Nonproductive people have no
souls, so children are buried without ceremony when they die because,
although a child has a soul without which it could not live, it is unde-
veloped and hence does not require the ceremonial treatment of a
developed one. When adults die, there are ceremonies to separate the
soul o f the dead from the souls o f the living and send the dead person's
soul to the land o f the dead (Durrenberger 1975a, 1980).
Lisu spirits have power just as people do, and each spirit is connected
with productive aspects o f the environment just as souls are connected
with people. Anything with productive capacity, whether a human
being or a political division, a field or a path, has a spirit (Durrenberger
1977a). The productive capacity o f anything is some kind o f occult
(unseen) force, so there are spirits of things with productive forces. The
human soul is simply one kind of such a spirit; human souls and spirits
o f productive capacities have the same characteristics (Durrenberger
1980).
If something is productive, it has power; if something has power,
there is a spirit o f that thing; and if there is a spirit o f something, it can
be offended; if some entity is offended, it can be compensated, but it
may have recourse to self-help if no other accommodation can be
reached. People can negotiate with each other, but they cannot directly
negotiate with spirits they cannot see in the same way; therefore, spirits
have recourse to self-help. T o prevent an offended entity from having
continued recourse to self-help, one apologizes to it and compensates it
for the damages done. Lisu describe the apology o f a person to another
person and the apology o f a person to a spirit with the same word.
Since wealth is the source o f power, compensation must be in the form
o f wealth. These statements follow from a set of assumptions: (1) that
power flows from wealth; (2) that wealth is the result o f productivity;
(3) that power can be lost and reinstated by presentations o f wealth.

Conclusions
Although religious concepts o f Lisu and Kachin are similar, Leach
described hierarchic and egalitarian systems among Kachin, what he
took to be ifurnsa and g,umlao (1954). Maran (1967) argues that there
are at least two contrasts: hierarchic versus egalitarian, and hereditary
versus nonhereditary, and suggests that what Leach has described is a
hierarchic society with a hereditary component (Leach's gumsa) and a
nonhereditary component (Leach'sgumlao). Both types o f system take
62 E . PAUL DURRENBERGER

hierarchy for granted and differ only in the means of assigning positions
within the hierarchy.
In the hierarchic situation there is a scarcity of lowland goods distrib-
uted by exchanges among lineages and by heredity (Leach 1954). Pos-
sessions are converted into influence because the innate qualities of the
superior person are attributed to the same source as the wealth, his
position in the round of exchange, and his hereditary position. Thus,
the qualitative aspect of fate, which is related to power, is also heredi-
tary and known from information about parentage. Such a system
involves a set of implications in which fate and power are central.
In a nonhierarchic system the principles of hereditary position are
repudiated as the result of a general availability of goods, and fate is
unpredictable, indicated only by personal accumulation of wealth.
With a repudiation of the hierarchical principle comes the acceptance of
the idea of equality, but in order to show that one is equal to his fel-
lows, he must be respectable and honorable (have du), so the status of a
person's du is jealously guarded, and even apparently trivial offenses
may become significant.
The concept of power is central to the operation of social relations in
both the hierarchic and egalitarian conditions, but with different conse-
quences for action. In hierarchic societies, it allows one to assume that
someone else has more or less of it than oneself on the basis of facts
such as parentage, and one must prove one's right to status by retaining
it or enhancing it through economic and social moves. Unless the posi-
tion is actively kept, one loses or forfeits claim to it. One can measure
precisely how much prestige a person has in a hierarchical system by
counting the number of feasts of merit he has sponsored. In an egalitar-
ian system, the amount of prestige is ambiguous, and people must con-
stantly prove that they have as much as anyone else. Acquisitiveness,
consumerism, and a work ethic accompany an ideology of generosity
and reciprocity.
"Custom,"—what we might analyze into politics, law, religion,
social relations, and kinship—is important in egalitarian societies. Even
without authoritative decisions, Lisu can negotiate with each other and
contain disorder within tolerable limits to the extent that they can
agree on custom (Durrenberger 1976b).
Power and prestige are based on generosity. The ability to be gener-
ous is based on acquisitiveness. Reciprocity among households is the
economic dimension of egalitarian social relationships (Durrenberger
1976c; Sahlins 1972:219-220). Acquisitiveness is equivalent to Sah-
Witchcraft among Lisu Highlanders 63

lins' "negative reciprocity," a violation of sociability. Lisu life experi-

ence indicates the importance of acquisitiveness even if custom does
not recognize it.
What is outside custom is not controllable, unmanageable within
the Lisu scheme of things. Thus it is dangerous to take cases before
Thai authorities. Spirits and people who operate within the logic of
Lisu custom are manageable, but witch/were-animals, like acquisitive-
ness, operate outside the logic of custom, outside the realm of sociabil-
ity, are antireciprocal and antisocial and not manageable. That most
suggestions of witchcraft are associated with admitted stinginess sug-
gests a projection of the antisociability of acquisitiveness onto a cate-
gory of witches (Spiro 1967).
The contract of a medicine woman or incantation master with the
spirit that empowers their actions is a balanced reciprocity whereby the
spirit does something in return for a specified reward. The servitors of
village guardian spirits and shamans have relationships of general reci-
procity with their spirits because they are to do what is necessary for the
spirits and the spirits reciprocate. In contrast, the witch/were-animal
spirit enters into no relationship with its hosts, but is part of them and
nonreciprocal.
The category of witch/were-animal exists as a logical possibility
related to the contradictions of the Lisu logic of social relations, but its
particular realization at any time depends on historical realities. I do
not know why Gwa are known as witches, but since the affliction is
held to be transmitted by contamination, all of the lineage are thought
to be afflicted. The fact that they therefore marry within the lineage
removes them from the reciprocity of marriage alliance and reinforces
the antisociability component of the concept.
The witch/were-animal fits into the logic of polarities as a negative
element versus sociable humans on the positive side, in the analogic
formulae of day:night, spirit:human, soul:body, human:witch. In its
animal form, the witch/were-animal eats human flesh and harms others
without provocation or reason, without being offended, is antirecipro-
cal and beyond the logic of social relations. Such epitomes of the anti-
human are plausible in terms of the logic of polarities.
While the symptoms and etiology of witchcraft and "sorcery"
attacks are similar—the intrusion of something, a spirit or object that
must be extruded (Durrenberger 1977b)—witches and sorcerers are
quite different. Witches suffer as much as their victims, whereas "sor-
cerers," incantation masters, must learn their craft and may use it for
64 E . PAUL DURRENBERGER

beneficial as well as maleficent ends, and their incantations can only be

effective if their ends are just; thus "sorcery" is social, following the
logic of power and retribution that underlies social relations.
Clearly, Leach's speculations about Kachin witchcraft, based on
Durkhemian assumptions, are not substantiated by ethnographic de-
tail. Showing how this analysis offers new and enlightening perspectives
on other, broader, questions expands the treatment beyond the merely
descriptive and gives the analysis of one instance of sorcery and witch-
craft some significance beyond mere ethnographic curiosity.
There are many similarities between Lisu religion and the lowland
Buddhism of Shan, Thai, and Burmese (Durrenberger 1981,1983). At
the level of the lexicon, the Lisu word for witch spirit, phyíphá is proba-
bly derived from the Shan pha, and Lisu khü, calamity spirit, is likewise
probably from Shan kho (Durrenberger 1982a). Conceptually, the Lisu
spirits of the medicine woman and incantation spirit are similar to the
Shan notion of any skill being empowered by the lineage of its teachers,
and the Lisu idea of myt, fate, is similar in its operations in everyday life
to the Buddhist notion of karma as it is expressed in practical village
Buddhism (Nash 1965:76).
To account for such similarities, Leach (1954) supposes that every
similarity between Kachin and Shan is a consequence of Kachin bor-
rowing from Shan, while Spiro (1967) suggests that some of them may
be consequences of a common pre-Buddhist reality system. Most
scholars who study Theravada Buddhism try to explain the apparent
anomalies between scripture and practice—differences between what
scriptures say and what people understand and do. If we suppose, with
Spiro, that the reality system must be re-created by every generation
based on some external reality such as economic or social relations
(Durrenberger 1982b), then we would expect that wherever we find
similar economic and social realities and logics, we shall find similar reli-
gious manifestations. In other words, if people build religious catego-
ries from their experience, they will be similar to the extent that their
experience is equivalent.
From this perspective, we would expect lowlanders to create some
religious notions similar to Lisu ones to the extent that the realities of
their village life are comparable. We would therefore expect lowland vil-
lagers to have religious notions quite similar to Lisu, and from this per-
spective, seeing Buddhism from the outlook of the highlands rather
than from the perspective of Indian scriptures and orientalist assump-
tions, it is the Buddhist elements that seem anomalous and somewhat
out of place. This calls for a reorientation of Buddhist studies toward
Witchcraft among Lisu Highlanders 65

ethnography in order to ask the more interesting question of how to

interpret the Buddhist anomalies rather than how to interpret animist
anomalies.

N o t e a n d References
My wife, Dorothy, and I lived in the Lisu village of Ban Lum in Chiang
mai Province from 1968 through 1970. The fieldwork was financed by a con-
tract from the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command,
Office of the Surgeon General, to the University of Illinois.

Dessaint, A. Y. 1971. Lisu migration in the Thai highlands. Ethtwkgy 10:329-

348.
. 1972. The poppies are beautiful this year. Natural History 81:30-37,
92-96.
. 1980. Minorities of Southwest China. New Haven, Conn.: Human
Relations Area Files Press.
Durrenberger, E. Paul. 1971. The ethnography of Lisu curing. Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of Illinois, Urbana.
. 1974. The regional context of the economy of a Lisu village in north-
ern Thailand. Southeast Asia 3:569-575.
. 1975a. The Lisu concept of the soul. Journal of the Siam Society 63:63-
71.
. 1975b. Lisu occult roles. Bijdrqgen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde
131:138-205.
. 1975c. Lisu shamans and some general questions. Journal of the Steward
Anthropological Society 7:1-20.
. 1976a. A Lisu shamanistic seance. Journal of the Siam Society 64:151-
160.
. 1976b. Law and authority in a Lisu village: Two cases. Journal of
AnthropologicalBesearch 32:301-325.
. 1976c. The economy of a Lisu village. American Ethnologist 3:633-
644.
. 1976d. Lisu curing: A case history. Bulletin of the History of Medicine
50:356-371.
. 1977a. Of Lisu dogs and Lisu spirits. Folklore (London) 88:61-63.
. 1977b. Lisu etiological categories. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde 113:90-99.
. 1978. An interpretation of a Lisu tale. Folklore (London) 89:94-103.
. 1979. Misfortune and therapy among the Lisu of northern Thailand.
Anthropological Quarterly 52:447-458.
. 1980. Belief and the logic of Lisu spirits. Bijdragen totde TaaL, Landmen
Volkenkunde 136:21-40.
. 1981. The Southeast Asian context of Theravada Buddhism. Anthro-
pology 5:45-62.
. 1982a. Shan kho: The essence of misfortune. Anthropos 71:16-26.
66 E . PAUL DUBBENBERGER

. 1982b. An analysis of Lisu symbolism, economics, and cognition.

Pacific Viewpoint23:127-145.
. 1983. The Shan rocket festival: Buddhist and non-Buddhist aspects of
Shan religion. Journal of the Siam Society 71:63-74.
. 1989. Lisu religion. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, Center for
Southeast Asian Studies.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1965. Theories of primitive religion. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Leach, E. R. 1954. Political systems of highland Burma. Boston: Beacon Press.
Maran, LaRaw. 1967. Toward a basis for understanding the minorities in
Burma: The Kachin example. In Southeast Asian tribes, minorities, and
nations, ed. P. Kunstadter, 125-146. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univer-
sity Press.
Nash, Manning. 1965. The golden road to modernity: Village life in contemporary
Burma. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Sahlins, Marshall. 1972. Stone age economics. Chicago and New York: Aldine-
Atherton.
Sperber, Dan. 1975. Bethinking symbolism. Trans. Alice L. Morton. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Spiro, M. E. 1967. Burmese supernaturalism. Englewood Clifls, N.J.: Prentice-
Hall.
Tambiah, S. J. 1970. Buddhism and the spirit cults in North-East Thailand. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
 4
Witches, Fortune, and
Misfortune among the Shan
of Northwestern Thailand

NICOLA TANNENBAUM

I N THIS CHAPTER I examine the role of witches for the Shan, a Tai
minority group living in Thailand. Since hosting a witch spirit endows
one with some advantages, the question becomes why do the Shan
view hosting a witch spirit so negatively. To answer that question
requires an exploration of the Shan worldview and the context within
which they interpret witches. I first present a brief overview of witches,
what they do and how one becomes one. After a brief ethnographic
account of the Shan, I provide an analysis of the Shan worldview, dis-
cussing the nature of power and how one achieves it, the relationships
between more and less powerful beings, and the place of Buddhism
within it. Next, I describe the Shan conceptual framework for both
good and bad fortune and relate it to ideas of power and protection.
Finally, I reconsider, phi phu (witches) and discuss their place in the
Shan worldview predicated on power-protection.

Witches
People do not talk much about witches, phi phu (phi, spirit;
"wizard, sorcerer, witch" [Cushing 1914:461]); one learns about them
through indirect references and occasional gossip. I initially learned
about phi phu when I was doing research in 1979-1981 in Thongmakh-
san. A Thongmakhsan man eloped with a woman from a nearby house;
the woman's mother was very upset and suffered a stroke. People
explained that her extreme reaction was a consequence of the man
coming from a phi phu family. Phi phu are contagious: if a person eats
an unspecified number of meals with a. phi phu, she/he will also host a

67
68 NICOLA TANNENBAUM

phi phu. The bride's mother had reason to believe that her daughter
would soon possess aphi phu. A general indication of whether or not a
family is believed to host phi phu is if their spouses come from outside
the immediate area.
I learned more about them during my research in Mawk Tsam Pe in
1984-1985. I had recorded a number of sermons and was working
with a Shan woman fluent in English to transcribe and translate these.
In one sermon a monk made passing reference to beautiful women and
said we all know what beautiful women have. His remark was greeted
with laughter. The woman helping me translate explained that this was
a reference to phi phu. I began asking questions about spirits in general
and also aboutphiphu. People were reluctant to use the term "phu";
they were both interested and uneasy in talking about witches. As with
the monk's comment, people often laughed uneasily about the topic.
Hosting a phiphu is unfortunate but not necessarily malign. People
interacting with a person who is suspected of having a. phi phu need to
behave more circumspectly; if one angers a person who hosts aphiphu,
that anger will cause the phiphu to react regardless of the host's inten-
tions. Likewise, a person who has a phi phu needs to control his/her
emotions so this force will not be unintentionally released.
Both men and women are capable of being witches. A person can use
his/her phi phu power intentionally to cause harm. While phi phu are
usually contracted through contagion, a person may desire to host one.
In this case the person desiring a phiphu seeks out a person who has one
and asks him/her to share the phi phu. This sharing does not diminish
the donor's phi phu. Possessing and using a phiphu gives one a certain
attractiveness. A particularly beautiful woman is said to get her beauty
from being a phiphu. An older woman who is unusually attractive to
men may be said to host a phi phu (see Eberhardt 1988).
Possessing phi phu also makes it possible for hosts to have a spirit
double or to turn themselves into animals. The grandfather of the
groom in the elopement marriage is said to have had a phiphu. He was
the leader of a group of people who setded in Thongmakhsan. There
are stories of his ability to be in two places at once, to travel faster than
others, and of his extraordinary stamina. His descendants are consid-
ered to have phi phu, although no one ordinarily talks about it. The
spouses of his children and grandchildren generally arefromoutside the
village.
Once one has a phi phu, one cannot get rid of it. The only way to
mitigate its automatic operation is either by ordaining as a Buddhist
monk or novice or by becoming a Buddhist "nun." As long as one
Witches among the Shan 69

continues to keep the rules associated with these statuses, the auto-
matic operation of phi phu is stopped; once one no longer keeps the
precepts associated with these statuses, it resumes.
Given the charisma, stamina, and ability to become were-animals
associated with hosting a phi phu, why do the Shan not want to host
such a spirit? To answer this question requires an excursion into the
nature of the Shan worldview and how it operates.

The Shan
The Shan live in the mountain valleys of southern China, the
Shan States, and in Maehongson and Chiang Mai provinces in Thai-
land. Like the other lowlanders, they have a long history of state organ-
ization (Moerman 1966; Mangrai 1981). Shan in Maehongson Prov-
ince are peasant farmers. They settled this area one hundred or more
years ago, primarily from the Shan State of Mawk Mai, presently part of
Burma (Wilson 1985). Maehongson Shan have the same political
administrative structure as the rest of Thailand. Local authorities, vil-
lage headman, and subdistrict officers (Thai, kamnan), are likely to be
Shan, while the higher-ranking, centrally appointed authorities are
Central Thai. This differs from the historical past, when they were
ruled by Shan officials appointed by the Shan lord, tsaopha. While both
the ruling personnel and the villagers' obligations to the state have
changed, the villagers' subordinate position remains. (See Durren-
berger 1977 for an account of villagers' obligations during the Shan
period.)
Shan, like lowland Burmans, Northern Thai, Lao, Central Thai and
Cambodians, are Theravada Buddhist, although each group practices
variant forms of the religion with different festivals, religious scripts,
and ordination lines. Nevertheless, they all identify themselves as Bud-
dhist, recognize the others as their coreligionists, and share the Pali
canon.
This chapter draws on research in two Shan villages in Maehongson
Province: Thongmakhsan, a small, relatively poor village, during
1979-1981 and 1988; and Mawk Tsam Pe, a larger, wealthier village,
during 1984-1985. 1

The Shan Worldview

For Shan, power {haeng, takho) is a basic, unquestioned part of the
universe: it simply exists. However, it is not equally distributed
70 NICOLA TANNENBAUM

throughout the universe; some beings have great power, others have
little. All beings in the universe are ranked in terms of relative power.
The five Buddhas—the three previous Buddhas, Gautama Buddha of
this world period, and Arimetiya, the next Buddha—have the greatest
power, while beings in the lowest hells have the least. Humans gener-
ally rank somewhere in the middle. In this system humans and spirits
are essentially the same; they are born, can feel pain and pleasure, and
must die. Both humans and spirits are located on this same power con-
tinuum. The only difference between spirits and humans is that
humans are always visible to spirits and other humans, whereas spirits
can decide whether or not they want humans to see them.
Power implies protection. If one has access to power one is pro-
tected; if one is protected, one has the power or freedom to do as one
chooses (see Hanks 1962 for a discussion of power in similar terms for
Central Thai). This makes the Shan universe inherently dangerous. The
essence of power is its ability to protect and ward off the consequences
of behavior. Power-protection does not cause good things to happen;
it passively prevents bad things from happening. Beings with power are
described as shading their followers. Power takes the form of barriers
\he\ that ward off misfortune. This power is morally neutral; it is nei-
ther inherently good nor bad. The powerful being decides how she/he
will use it.
One can either develop one's own capacity for power or rely on the
power of amulets, tattoos, and other beings. The primary means of
developing one's capacity for power is through the practice of restraint
and withdrawal from everyday activities. Restraint means keeping the
Buddhist precepts (Shan, sin; Pali, sila). I discuss, first, the relationship
between Buddhist elements and power-protection, as the power of
amulets, tattoos, and other powerful beings is a consequence of this
relationship.
In Theravada Buddhist countries, practicing withdrawal and austeri-
ties, keeping Buddhist precepts is glossed as the practice of morality
(Spiro 1966, 1980). Laypeople should keep the five basic precepts: to
refrain from killing, stealing, improper sexual behavior, lying, and
intoxication. Keeping precepts differs from keeping the Christian Com-
mandments, which one must keep. Precept keeping automatically con-
fers power; the more precepts one keeps, the greater one's power (Tan-
nenbaum 1 9 8 7 , 1 9 8 8 , 1 9 8 9 ) .
One gains power to the extent that one is able to withdraw from
everyday activities. Shan villagers recognize the impossibility of keeping
even the five precepts in the process of everyday living. For example, it
Witches among the Shan 71

is impossible to avoid killing, as an accidental death of an insect is still

considered a killing. Men find it difficult to refuse a drink of whiskey,
and the strict interpretation of the precept would require abstention
from all intoxicants, not merely avoiding intoxication.
Acquisition of power is not inherently connected with morality. Yet
it is easy to overlook the essential moral neutrality of power. Precept
keeping can be interpreted as either morality or power seeking. The
ambiguity lies not in the consequences of precept keeping, which auto-
matically convey power, but in people's motivations. One can strive to
keep precepts to aid in the escape from the cycle of rebirths, the
approved motive, or one can do so to achieve magical power. To claim
mystical powers that one has not achieved is one of the four reasons for
expulsion from the monastic order. (The other three are killing or urg-
ing someone to kill another human, engaging in sexual intercourse,
and stealing.) The automatic acquisition of mystical power is a recog-
nized consequence of practicing restraint and withdrawal, but it is
deemphasized in scriptural Buddhism. The Buddha warns his followers
not to be distracted from their goal of escaping the cycle of rebirths by
the acquisition of mystical power.
People's motivations for keeping precepts do not affect the accumu-
lation of power. Regardless of a man's intent when he becomes a
monk, keeping the monastic precepts gives him great power, and peo-
ple interact with monks in the same way they do with other powerful
beings. This reinforces the ambiguity of precept keeping, since one can-
not know the reasons motivating someone to keep precepts.
Treating precept keeping as the practice of morality is not wrong as
this is one possible interpretation, but it obscures the fact that in this
worldview restraint confers power. Examining precept keeping in a
broader context illuminates its essential moral neutrality. People who
receive powerful tattoos are required to keep one of the five everyday
precepts at all times. If the person fails to keep the promised precept,
the tattoo will not work and, depending on the tattoo, the person will
become physically or mentally ill. Typically, the person chooses the
precept to refrain from improper sexual behavior, usually interpreted as
refraining from adultery. By keeping this precept, a man with tattoos
that protect him from gunshot wounds or knife cuts can rob and kill
with impunity. In other words, keeping this one precept does not
imply any commitment to morality or right behavior; often, in fact, it
suggests a commitment to a life of crime (Tannenbaum 1987).
A person who makes powerful tattoos and amulets must practice
withdrawal and restraint or his tattoos and amulets will not be effective.
72 NICOLA TANNENBAUM

The more precepts a person keeps, the greater his power and ability to
draw on power from other sources. (I use male pronouns here because
women rarely tattoo or make amulets.) However, the recipient of the
amulet or tattoos is not committed to restraint beyond keeping one
precept.
There are a number of beings who derive their power from precept
keeping. First and most important are the Buddhas. Buddhas have
abandoned all attachment to wealth, worldly powers, and sensual plea-
sures, and through meditation have given up attachment to their
"selves." They exemplify the peak of power that can be obtained
through withdrawal and restraint. Next come forest monks, those who
regularly practice austerities in addition to the 227 rules incumbent on
monks. Next are regular monks, followed by novices who keep ten pre-
cepts, mae khao, loosely "Buddhist nuns," who keep eight, and old
people who keep eight precepts on fortnighdy holy days, Wan Sin, dur-
ing the rains retreat [Shan, wcta; Thai, phansa) and keep five precepts
the rest of the time. Traditional doctors and tattooers are members of
this last group. All of these people have sufficient power to give bless-
ings; they are singled out as recipients of offerings and those to whom
people pay respect and ask for forgiveness.
Beings have different capacities for power: those with greater capaci-
ties are able to seek it through withdrawal and restraint, while others
with lesser capacities rely on the power of amulets or tattoos or become
dependent on more powerful others. When one relies on the power of
others, one is assured of protection only if she/he maintains the proper
relationship with the powerful other.
Because the world is populated by powerful beings, many more
powerful than any given human, it is necessary to enter into some kind
of relationship with one to ensure one's protection. One enters into
this relationship by making offerings and then maintaining it with regu-
lar offerings, paying respect and asking for forgiveness, khantaw, and
being mindful of and grateful for past favors. In return, the powerful
other protects and nurtures his/her followers. But powerful beings are
dangerous, they can easily be offended and cause harm. Villagers know
this as part of existential reality. Offended spirits cause illness; offended
government officials create real problems for villagers. The potential for
offense also accounts for the practice of paying respect to and asking for
forgiveness from powerful others.
Beings with power-protection have the potential to withhold it,
leaving the person exposed to dangers from other beings. Conse-
quently, powerful beings need to be treated circumspecdy, and the
Witches among the Shan 73

greater the being's power-protection, the greater the restraint in inter-

action. One way in which people deal with this power differential is by
limiting interaction with powerful beings or using intermediaries to
interact on their behalf.
This conception of power as protection is expressed in both speech
and action. Power publicly discussed in sermons or by the traditional
doctor is benign. Powerful beings shade, protect, and nurture their fol-
lowers. The powerful beings that villagers regularly interact with are
fairly reliable and benign. However, power is essentially neutral: it can
be used for good or evil, depending on the person wielding it. One
indication of the abuse of power is evident in blessings that ask for pro-
tection from the five enemies, including government officials and, spe-
cifically, bad officials (Tannenbaum and Durrenberger 1988). Other
evidence comes from the need to drive out evil and construct barriers
to protect cleared areas; in the ways people interact with more powerful
beings, both human and other; and in the use of tattoos (Tannenbaum
1987,1988,1989).
Throughout one's life span one develops his/her power-protection.
At birth, children have little power-protection of their own and must
rely totally on that of their parents. Because they have so little power,
children are very vulnerable to illness and other misfortunes. As they
mature, they acquire more power-protection through knowledge and
experience. At adolescence, male and female ability to acquire power
diverges. Young adult boys are likely to be ordained. During this period
of restraint, they acquire power—to the extent that they have the capac-
ity for it—to prepare them for their adult lives. Young adult women, as
they mature sexually and begin to menstruate, acquire the ability to
destroy power-protection. This is simply a consequence of their female
nature and the destructive power of woman's genitals and genital excre-
tions. Women seldom acquire sufficient power-protection to take care
of themselves outside the domestic sphere. In old age, as both men and
women withdraw from daily life and begin to sleep at the temple and
keep precepts, they acquire sufficient power-protection to give bless-
ings. In older age, the general deterioration of health and mental ability
is a sign that their power is waning. When one's power-protection is
gone, one dies.

Merit, Luck, and Good Fortune

In Theravada Buddhism, karma (Shan, kam) is the ultimate justi-
fication for people's situation in this life. Karma is the inevitable conse-
74 NICOLA TANNENBAUM

quence of actions: good deeds return good in this and other lives, and
bad deeds, bad. Merit, khuso, is the result of good actions and produces
good results; demerit, akhuso, results from bad actions and produces
bad results. Karma is the reason for differences among people: gender,
wealth, health, position, political power, and so on. In state contexts it
justifies and legitimates unequal access to resources and power.
There is considerable ambiguity in using karma to explain particular
events. In everyday speech, Shan explain that they did not win a lottery
because they lacked sufficient merit for it. It is something of a joke, and
for other more mundane events they explain failure in mundane terms,
the high price of garlic, insufficient rainfall, laziness, and so on. If peo-
ple do win money in a lottery, they do not explain their good fortune
in terms of sufficient merit but talk about luck; it would be presumptu-
ous and arrogant to appeal to merit as the cause. Attributing the reason
for one's fortune is a general problem, since merit is unknowable until
after the fact, and power or luck are always alternative explanations.
Consequently, there are competing possible interpretations for any
event.
Monks preach about the immediate benefits of gaining merit
through generosity. While people expect the merit they earn through
contributions to be beneficial in both this and future lives, they seldom
use "merit" as an explanation for particular events. Rather, merit or
karma is used to explain the overall pattern of peoples' lives, something
unknowable until one's life span is practically over. This follows from
the difficulty of determining whether a particular event resulted from
luck or merit.

Misfortune
Karma may determine the general quality of one's life, but partic-
ular events have particular causes. Ultimately, misfortune results when
one's own power-protection is weakened. Power-protection serves to
create a barrier around people, their residence and dependents. If this
barrier is weakened, one becomes vulnerable. Age, gender, and per-
sonal capacity for power-protection determine one's vulnerability. One
becomes vulnerable because something weakens or removes one's pro-
tective barrier, and one suffers misfortunes because one's protective
barrier is weakened. However, if one's protective barrier is too strong it
will also prevent good fortune from entering. Men with a large number
of tattoos to prevent knives or bullets from entering are said to be poor
and generally unlucky.
There are a number of causes that weaken these protective barriers.
Witches among the Shan 75

One can offend powerful beings and be removed from their sphere of
protection, one's own barrier may be weak because of poor astrological
conditions, or one may come into contact with beings whose nature
weakens power-protection. The remedy in all these cases is to place
one's self under the power-protection of more powerful beings. This
may require the help of specialists who draw on their own power,
developed through restraint, and that of their teachers and the Bud-
dhas, to protect and enhance the patients' own power-protection.
Women may become " n u n s " and men, monks or novices, and rely on
the power of the Buddhas and precept keeping to protect them.
Alternatively, one may renew and reestablish the relationship with the
offended powerful other by making an offering, paying respect, and
asking forgiveness.

Offending More Powerful Beings

Powerful beings may be either humans or spirits. Powerful
humans include local officials, wealthy people, one's parents, elders,
and monks. Offending powerful humans, especially officials or local big
men, has serious consequences for one's health and well-being. Offend-
ing parents, elders, and monks may have less drastic consequences.
Conceptually, offending powerful others has the same result; one is
removed from their spheres of protection. At worst, one would be left
without any protection in a dangerous, violent world. People pay for-
mal respect at least twice a year to ask forgiveness for any deeds that
gave offense, whether intentional or not.
Spirits are associated with a wide range of places. Generally, every
object or place has a spirit owner. There is a cadastral spirit, Tsao
Muon0, for each village; there are spirit owners of fields, mountains,
streams, wells, and so on. If people frequently use a particular site, then
they enter into a relationship with that spirit, usually making regular
offerings in return for the spirit's protection. It is possible unknowingly
to offend these spirits, and the spirit may take revenge and cause illness
or other misfortunes. It takes a skilled practitioner to identify the
offended spirit and determine what kind of offering will remedy the
offense. Once restitution is made, the illness or misfortune should dis-
appear.

Astrological Influences—kyo or kio

Kyo or kio are the planets. Cushing (1914:78) translates it as " a
planet; a fairy or spirit attached to a person from birth." These are bet-
76 NICOLA TANNENBAUM

ter understood as planetary or astrological influences. While there are

spirits associated with each planet, the influences that attach to a person
are impersonal. Shan operate within an eight-planet astrological sys-
tem. Each planet is mapped into a day of the week, with Wednesday
counting as two, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.
The day of the week one is born on indicates which planet initially
influences one's life. Each planet's influence lasts a number of years;
the eight-planet cycle lasts 108 years (Tannenbaum 1984, 1988; see
also Scott [Shway Yoe] 1882, for a similar account in Burma, and Davis
(1984), for the Northern Thai).
These planets interact with one's age, and in certain years one may
be healthy and lucky or weak and unlucky. Illnesses have natural
causes, but being sick frequendy may be a consequence of being astro-
logically weak. Accidents, being bitten by a dog, for example, are also
attributed to being astrologically weak, kio un. This can also result in
khaw, or general weakness. Khaw is general vulnerability; Cushing
(1914:127) translates it as "to have an emaciating disease; to be sick
repeatedly, supposedly caused by the evil influences of the planets."
Depending on the seriousness of this weakness, there are a number of
possible remedies: one can have the traditional doctor prepare a special
candle and offerings to repair one's astrological position, mae kyo mae
kio\ one can send the misfortune away by making a small offering, plac-
ing it on the river, and having it float away, lay khaw by kio\ one can
make offerings to the Buddha or monks; and one can perform a combi-
nation of these (see Durrenberger 1980,1982, for descriptions of these
ceremonies).
These astrological influences are similar to fate. If one is prosperous
and healthy, one has good planetary influences; if one is poor and
sickly, one has bad planetary influences. One can try to change one's
condition, but it may not work. Some people, for whatever reason,
have weak astrological positions and remain vulnerable to misfortune,
illness, and loss of power throughout their lives.

Less Powerful Spirits

There are other spirits that have little power and hence little
capacity to be offended. They may nonetheless cause misfortune
because they need something; in return for an offering they withdraw
the misfortune. Again, it takes a skilled practitioner to identify the
spirit causing the misfortune and the appropriate offering. These offer-
ings are to lure or drive the spirit away from the human domain and
prevent it from causing further harm.
Witches among the Shan 77

Beings That Cancel Power-Protection

Bad death spirits and women weaken the protective barriers that
surround a person. This is a consequence of the nature of these beings,
something that is recognized but not further elaborated upon.
Bad death spirits, phi tay hong, are destructive of power-protection. A
violent or accidental death results in a spirit that remains to haunt and
harass the living. These spirits are particularly dangerous. A normal
death from old age or a long illness also creates a spirit, but after the
funeral rites have been performed it disappears. Ideally, when a person
knows she/he is going to die, she/he thinks about the next life and
withdraws from involvement with the living. In a violent death, the
death is sudden, the person is still concerned with regular day-to-day
affairs, and the spirit will continue to try to complete plans made before
death. The spirit is dangerous to the living since, by its nature, it is
destructive of power-protection, and hence life. A bad death spirit can
actively seek to kill someone or, simply through carrying out a plan
made while alive, visit someone and cause injury by its presence, with-
out any intent to harm.
Bad deaths are the ultimate misfortune. They bring a sudden violent
loss of power-protection that results in death and a dangerous spirit
which, intentionally or not, can cause a similar sudden loss of power in
the living. The violent loss of power creates a negative kind of energy
which, when placed in conjunction with the more positive kind, can-
cels it out, causing weakness and death.
The genitalia of sexually mature women are similarly destructive of
power-protection. Any object that has been in contact with women's
genitals or genital excretions has the capacity to remove protective bar-
riers (Tannenbaum 1987; see also Terwiel (1970), for Central Thai, and
Davis (1984), for Northern Thai). Women do not ride on the top of
minibuses because that would place their genitals above men's heads
and destroy their power or that of their amulets. Women's skirts,
underwear, and pants are hung up to dry in low places so that men will
not be able to walk underneath them, thus destroying or weakening
their power. Traditional curers do not go underneath elevated houses
in order to avoid having anything unclean above their heads; they go
underneath their own homes, but avoid the areas underneath women's
sleeping rooms. A strip of skirt tied to a gun barrel will give the bullets
fired from that gun the power to penetrate the protective barriers estab-
lished by closing off tattoos.
Being female and dying a bad death compound the negative power
and increase the resultant spirit's ability to cancel or drain off power-
78 NICOLA TANNENBAUM

protection. The bad-death spirit that results from a death during child-
birth is extremely dangerous, more so than any other bad-death spirit.

Witches Reconsidered
Witches reverse many of the characteristics associated with power-
ful beings. Normally, a powerful being protects and nurtures his/her
dependents; here, the person hosting the phi phu nurtures and protects
it. Offending a powerful being terminates one's relationship with it;
with phi phu, there is no way to terminate the relationship. One
acquires phi phu through sharing too many meals with another person
who already hosts a phi phu. This is a reversal of the normal value placed
on sharing meals.
Powerful beings are in control of their actions and those of others.
Through this control, they mitigate the negative consequences of
change (Tannenbaum and Durrenberger 1989). Those possessing
phu are not in control, rather, phi phu react automatically to injure
those who offend their "hosts." Lack of control means that the person
is both weak and dangerous, much the way drunks are.
Control is an important corollary of power-protection. To be power-
ful, one must also be able to protect one's self and one's dependents;
without this one is not powerful. And without control one cannot
protect; beings without control are not powerful, merely dangerous.
Power is power-protection.
Dying a violent death demonstrates the impotence that results from
the inability to control events. Beings without this ability may be dan-
gerous but not powerful. The power to destroy is power, but without
control one is not capable of protection. Because these spirits cannot
control their destructive nature, they cannot protect and they do hot
have much power in the Shan context. Witches and other nonpowerful
spirits, drunks, and women all fall into the dangerous but not powerful
category.
Witches, phi phu, are plausible in a dangerous universe predicated on
power-protection. At best they are neutral, not injuring anyone. They
are not powerful; they have no followers and they cannot protect any-
one. If people are powerful and strongly protected, witches cannot
harm them. Hosting a phi phu means that one will never be particularly
powerful in the Shan scheme of things. Those who actively seek to host
a phi phu may have short-term gains, but in the long run they condemn
themselves and their families to this ambiguous and devalued status.
People do not explain their misfortunes in terms of the actions ofphi
Witches among the Shan 79

phu. They may be careful not to anger a person believed to be aphi phu,
but this is to prevent misfortune, not to explain it. Misfortune is "nat-
ural" in a dangerous universe where power is protection from the con-
sequences of behavior. Good fortune rather than misfortune is more
problematical and in need of explanation. One's success could be a con-
sequence of virtue, karma, and deserved; of power and the actions of
powerful others and morally neutral; or a result of the manipulation of
phi phu and immoral. Observers have no way of knowing the causes of
someone's success; the competing plausible explanations increase the
interpretive problem. Beautiful women or people with exceptional
good fortune may be virtuous, powerful, or possess phi phu.
Other information helps to decide whether someone is said to host a
phi phu. If the person is otherwise virtuous, industrious, generous, and
generally behaves as people judge appropriate, then they are not likely
to be accused of hosting a phi phu. However, proper behavior is no
guarantee, since those who are unfortunate enough to marry or be
born into a phi phu family will also host a spirit. And in these communi-
ties everyone knows who comes from a phi phu family.
Shan witches fit the classic type discussed in introductory anthropol-
ogy texts (see Lessa and Vogt 1 9 7 9 : 3 3 2 - 3 3 3 ) . Being a witch is often
involuntary, there is a special essence or organ associated with it, and its
actions are automatic and not intentional. Shan witches serve a func-
tion similar to the one Evans-Pritchard (1937) assigned the Azande,
but they explain undeserved good fortune rather than bad.

Note and References

1. My research in Thongmakhsan during 1979-1981 was supported by a
grant from the Midwest Universities Consortium on International Activities
and the International Fertilizer Development Center. My research in Mawk
Tsam Pe during 1984-1985 was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from
the Social Science Research Council, New York.

Cushing, J. N. 1914 [1971]. Shan^English dictionary. Rangoon: American Bap-

tist Mission Press. Reprinted by Gregg International Publishers, West-
mead, England.
Davis, Richard. 1984. Muang metaphysics. Bangkok: Pandora Press.
Durrenberger, E. Paul. 1977. A socio-economic study of a Shan village in
Maehongson Province. Chiang Mai: Tribal Research Centre.
. 1980. Annual non-Buddhist religious observances among Mae Hong
Son Shan. Journal ofthe Siam Society 68:48-56.
. 1982. Shan kho: The essence of misfortune. Anthropos 77:16-26.
80 NICOLA TANNENBAUM

Eberhardt, Nancy. 1988. Siren song: Negotiating gender images in a rural Shan
village. In Gender, power, and the construction of the moral order: Studies from
the Thai periphery, N. Eberhardt, ed., 73-92. University of Wisconsin-
Madison. Center for Southeast Asian Studies, no. 4.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1937. Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Hanks, Luden M. 1962. Merit and power in the Thai social order. American
Anthropologist (A: 1247-1261.
Lessa, William A., and Evon Z. Vogt. 1979. Interpretations of magic, witch-
craft, and divination. In Beader in comparative religion, ed. W. Lessa and
E. Vogt, 332-334. New York: Harper & Row.
Mangrai, Sao Saimong. 1981. The Padaeng chronicle and the Jengtung state chroni-
cle translated. Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia, Center for
South and Southeast Asian Studies, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Moerman, Michael. 1965. Ethnic identification in a complex civilization.
American Anthropologist 67:1215-1230.
Scott, Sir James [Shway Yoe]. 1882 [1963], The Burman: His life and notions.
New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
Spiro, Melford. 1966. Buddhism and economic action in Burma. American
Anthropologist 68:1163-1173.
. 1980. Buddhism and society. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Tannenbaum, Nicola. 1984. Shan calendrics and the nature of Shan religion.
Anthropos 79:505-515.
. 1987. Tattoos: Invulnerability and power in Shan cosmology. Ameri-
can Ethnologist 14:693-711.
. 1988. Shan calendrical systems: The everyday use of esoteric knowl-
edge. Mankind (Australia) 18:14—25.
. 1989. Power and its Shan transformation. In Bitual, power, and economy
in mainland Southeast Asia, ed. S. Russell, 67-88. Center for Southeast
Asian Studies, special publication series. DeKalb, 111.: Northern Illinois
University.
Tannenbaum, Nicola, and E. Paul Durrenberger. 1988. Control, change, and
suffering: The messages of Shan Buddhist sermons. Mankind (Australia)
18 (3): 121-132.
Terwiel, B. J. 1970. Monks and magic: An analysis of religious ceremonies in central
Thailand. 2d rev. ed. Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies, Monograph
Series, no. 24. London: Curzon Press.
Wilson, C. 1985. The Burma-Thailand frontier over sixteen decades. Three
descriptive documents. Ohio University, Monographs in International
Studies, Southeast Asia Series, no. 70.
 5
Anger, Anxiety, and Sorcery:
An Analysis of Some Nuaulu
Case Material from Seram,
Eastern Indonesia
ROY ELLEN

PUBLISHED REPORTS of witchcraft and sorcery for the central

Moluccas are extremely scanty, and there are no existing accounts that
focus specifically on the subject. I shall refer to a few fragmentary notes
in the earlier literature later in this chapter, and from these and my own
field observations over a period of some sixteen years, a general picture
begins to emerge. Most of what I have learned at first hand is derived
from fieldwork done among the Nuaulu of south central Seram, and it
is this material which I address in some detail here. 1 My purpose is to
provide an introductory and general account of Nuaulu sorcery, using
selected case histories. These lend themselves to a consideration of the
relationship among accusations, social tensions, and emotional states,
and to a reflection on certain ambiguous attributes of sorcery as an
indigenous explanation.
Nuaulu believe that certain individuals have the power to cause ill-
ness and suffering in others through mystical means. Such people may
be either men or women, though no named women were ever men-
tioned to me in this connection. The powers vested in such persons, as
well as the individuals themselves, are termed ka(u) osane (v. oka osa: to
bewitch, to sorcerize), glossed in Ambonese Malay as suangi.11 trans-
late both terms here as sorcery. It is said that a person who has died
from sorcery can be identified on autopsy by a hard lump located some-
where in the intestines or stomach. Sorcerers themselves are also
thought to be identifiable in this way and the trait inherited, usually
through the male line. But although sorcery is understood in such
manifestly physical terms, its mode of action is put down to the trans-

81
82 ROY ELLEN

mission of spirit entities, which are said to invade the body of a victim
and which emanate from the desires and magical practices of one pro-
voked by anger. Beyond this the Nuaulu have no detailed theory of
how a spirit causes illness or death, though in general terms it is said to
enter the body at the particular region where the sickness occurs and its
movement through the air is said to resemble the wind. Whether inter-
preted as the consequence of malign magic, malicious demons, inter-
vention of willful ancestral spirits or of some supreme deity, virtually all
illness is thus seen to be caused by a spirit and its activities, the corollary
of this belief being that removal of the spirit is ordinarily followed by
swift recovery.

Coping with Sorcery

The cause of an illness can generally be identified to the satisfac-
tion of the victim and other interested parties, first through forms of
divination involving the manipulation of objects (nau) performed by
those skilled in such techniques, and, failing that (or alternatively), by
consulting saruana, the spirits of the immediate jural superiors sum-
moned by mediums.
Once the cause of an illness is determined as sorcery, and the sorcerer
located, a number of remedies are open to the victim. First, saruana
(often the same as used to divine the cause) may be requested to "take
out" the sorcery. Second, there are various spells and folk-medicinal
remedies. If it is suspected that sorcery contagion has entered the body
through eating contaminated food, the evidence for this would be
found in some alimentary complaint, such as dysentery. These are
purely therapeutic processes and do not necessarily involve taking re-
tributory action against the alleged sorcerer. However, it is widely
acknowledged that a victim of sorcery is perfectly entitled to employ
countersorcery against persons accused, even to the point of death.
"For if you shot me with an arrow, and [it just happened that] I did not
die, I would have a right to kill you with an arrow in return," com-
mented Komisi. The number of persons with knowledge of the cor-
rect procedures for performing effective sorcery or countersorcery
are nevertheless few. In Rohua, the names of Komisi and Konane
were often mentioned.
Once a sorcerer has been divined, the technique involves collecting
some personal leavings from the alleged sorcerer: earth from where his
(or her) feet have trodden or any substance that has been touched by or
emanates from the body of the intended victim—food, spittle, feces,
Anger, Anxiety, and Sorcery: Eastern Indonesia 83

urine, nail pairings, bodily dirt, sweat, or hair. The magician must then
return to the village and, with the assistance of a saruana and the appro-
priate ritual actions, direct a selected illness toward the person implicat-
ed. It is generally known that Komisi and Konane have this power, and
they are sometimes enlisted for help by others who feel themselves the
victims of evil.
In addition to the powers of particular renowned countersorcerers
(who are often the same as those reputed to be active sorcerers), each
clan possesses bespoken spells that can be used to ward off and counter
evildoing, including sorcery, as well as knowledge of the antidotes to
spells. The spells are linked to the ability to mobilize particular kinds of
malevolent spirits to act against an accused person, and they often
result in the condition which gave rise to the spirit-form in the first
place. Thus, pinam notune (Somori clan), the spirit of a mother and
child who have died during birth, will cause another death of a woman
and child at birth. The retributive action of a spirit therefore repro-
duces further spirits of the same kind. Other spirits do not appear to
reproduce themselves in this way—for example, mukene (Pia clan),
which inhabits the bodies of the mad {muke: crazy, mad, drunk), and
whose actions cause debilitating afflictions with symptoms such as the
vomiting of blood and the wasting of the bones, probably including
the condition which we call tuberculosis. Nutu (or nimoe) inai (lit.
"mother of the corpse") causes madness and affects the pelvic region
and sides of the trunk. Like many clan-linked spells, it takes on a physi-
cal presence as a wate, a uniquely constructed and prominendy dis-
played taboo sign.3 By contrast, painakite (Sonawe-ainakahata, Matoke
clans) is much more specifically defined in terms of countersorcery; the
symptoms of its effective action are much the same as mukene but tend
to bring death almost instantaneously. The words for these and other
spirits occur in everyday speech as expletives, but in contexts that neu-
tralize any mystical force otherwise consequent upon the utterance.
Thus, "painakite (i)raia!" alludes to the mistaken eating of food con-
taminated by the eponymous spirit, though it may appear in speech
quite unconnected with such an event. Only when a person is genu-
inely angry with another is the spirit activated.
The antidote for such a spell is for the chief of the offending clan to
put his right hand on the head of a victim, call upon the particular
ancestor who instituted the spell to remove it, and then to encourage
the familiar on its way by blowing into the ear. But this must be done
quietly, as in no way should the name of the ancestral spirit involved be
heard.
84 ROY ELLEN

Some Case Histories

All of the following case histories are partial, in that I cannot
claim to have had more than a glimpse of what may sometimes be a
long and complex episode, or series of related episodes. No doubt, had
I accorded the matter a higher priority in the field, I would now be able
to present more detailed material, though given that I also argue that
such cases are often of considerable historic (that is generational) depth
(see, in particular, case 2), it is difficult to imagine that the relevant data
could ever be complete. Cases 1, 2, and 3 are what I would regard as
"major"; case 4 is a single example of many "minor" instances which
might have been cited. The significance of this distinction will become
apparent in the discussion that follows, though in so small a sample all
cases should be seen as indicative rather than representative.
Perhaps I should also point out that I here refer to named individuals
by a binomial, the first word being the birth name and the second the
patrician name. This does not accord with traditional Nuaulu usage,
but it is convenient and reflects Indonesian administrative practice,
with which Nuaulu comply. Where the names Sonawe and Nepane
occur, I refer to the named subclans Sonawe-ainakahata and Nepane-
tomoien. Other Sonawe and Nepane subclans do not appear. In order
to further clarify the relations between the persons featuring in these
cases, I refer the reader to figure 1 (for cases 1 and 2) and figure 2 (for
cases 3 and 4).

Case 1. Patima Sonawe-ainakahata

Patima Sonawe-ainakahata was born around 1930 in Rohua and in
1970 had been married to Komisi, chief of the Somori clan and gov-
ernment headman in the same village, for about twenty-five years.
On 10 June of that year, Patima was reported by Napwai Somori (her
husband's elder brother's son) as having suffered for a long time from
agonizing pains in her body and limbs, which she attributed to sor-
cery. The same night Naunepe Nepane-tomoien unsuccessfully tried
to divine (nau) the cause. Komisi later said that the spirit that should
have come "had been lazy." As Patima had sometime previously
argued with Sorita Matoke over his recent marriage to Asue Sonawe,
she suspected that he might be a likely candidate. Asue was consid-
ered saumonne, that is, in a prohibited relationship, and throughout
1970 there were repeated incidents arising from the displeasure of the
two clans involved, including physical violence and the burning of a
Anger, Anxiety, and Sorcery: Eastern Indonesia 85

1 * 2 f

64. 7f 84_ 9f

10 6 11 I 12Q 13 14 15 A 16 6 17 18II 19 a A 20 6 21
Patima

2 2 » 231 24 A 2 5 Q A 26 27 A 28 A 29 A 6 3 0

31 q Napwai

1. Natulori (Amir) Matoke 17. Napwai (F) Somori

2. Makowai Nepane 18. Makasena Somori
3. Asue Sonawe 19. Sau'ute Nepane
4. Sorita Matoke 20. Komisi Somori
5. Pela-uma (Abdullah) Matoke 21. Patima Sonawe
6. Huanatu Somori 22. Rimanasa Penisa
7. Pinarehe Sonawe 23. Naupati (Nathanial) Matoke
8. Nepinama Sonawe 24. Inane Matoke
9. Sukue Nepane 25. Ah arena Pia
10. Martha Matoke 26. Teliam (Paulus) Matoke
11. Temene Matoke 27. Napwai (S) Somori
12. Naiha Penisa 28. Sekanima Nepane
13. Patetu Matoke 29. Bisara Nepane
14. Unsa Sonawe 30. Silo Nepane
15. Hatarai Sonawe 31. Daucus Nepane
16. Alewa Matoke
Figure 1. Relevant genealogical connections of Patima and Napwai: Cases
1 and 2

house. Asue was to have a daughter by Sorita, who suffered from her
status as the child ofan illegitimate union, and who would eventually
be adopted by the Catholic mission.
The night following the first, unsuccessful, attempt at nau, it was
tried again. This time the spirit indicated a man from the Muslim vil-
lage of Sepa with whom Komisi had quarreled over a claim to some
Nepane garden land at Monone, between Rohua and the river Upa,
1 kilometer to the west. The following morning Komisi fetched a
polypod fern from the forest of a kind called kupawane, which he said
 ROY E L L E N

would be made into a cold poultice, and applied it to the afflicted

parts of Patima's body. After that, I heard no more of this particular
case and presumed it had been effectively resolved.

Case 2. Napwai Somori

Napwai Somori had been brought up by his mother, Alewa Matoke,
and stepfather, Hatarai Sonawe-ainakahata, since birth, his own
father (also Napwai) having died in a hunting accident before Alewa's
confinement. He had been ill for some time before my long conver-
sation with him about the matter during the afternoon of 28 August
1970. In the early stages of the illness he had been unable to speak
and his throat was giving him severe discomfort. Napwai suspected
sorcery. Initial divination had suggested that the person responsible
had met Napwai at a—he used the Malay phrase—"pasar malam" (a
nighttime market) held in Amahai several days before the illness sur-
faced. This person had offered him bananas and cigarettes, which he
had accepted. He quickly fell ill and began to make the 30 kilometer
journey back to Rohua. At the Muslim village of Rata, he rested at
the house of Pela-uma (Abdullah) Matoke, his mother's brother,
who had converted to Islam some years previously. Pela-uma
employed his powers as a medium to contact some named ancestral
spirits (saruarui). The spirit brought back his voice a little, but he pro-
ceeded to lose it again. Since returning from Amahai, Napwai had
not spoken once to Hatarai or Alewa. On the strength of this evi-
dence Komisi (see case 1) and Hatarai had administered external
medication derived from the gingerborous rhizome of the plant
sukue, Kaempferiagalanga L. Now considerably better, Napwai—with
whom I had established a particularly close relationship of the kind
common among unmarried Nuaulu men—seemed anxious to talk at
some length about the causes of his illness. Up until this moment no
named culprit had been mentioned—at least not to me; and it had
been generally put about that the sorcerer had had no particular axe
to grind and was merely playing a malicious trick for the hell of it.
Napwai suggested three suspects. The first was Inane Matoke,
whose wife had died some months previously and with whom Nap-
wai had had a short conversation before leaving for Amahai. Just
"two words," he said, but sufficient to "take his breath" and work
sorcery on it, so that when he was in Amahai (and later Masohi, the
nearby administrative center of the Kabupaten of Maluku Tengah) he
lost his voice. The second suspect was Bisara Nepane-tomoien,
Anger, Anxiety, and Sorcery: Eastern Indonesia 87

whom he had met in Amahai and who had given him some bananas.
These had "stuck in his heart," and as a result he had felt as though
he were half dead. The third suspect was Naupate (Nathanial)
Matoke, twice-widowed, most recendy in 1969 shortly before I
arrived in Seram. Napwai had also met Naupate in Amahai, who had
offered him some tobacco that he had gratefully accepted. This, said
Napwai, lodged in his throat, where it had remained, giving rise to
the symptoms of malaria. Over the subsequent weeks, if Napwai
found himself in the company of those he suspected of sorcery, he
made some kind of excuse and left. At other times, he would
exchange words, though with some perfunctoriness; elsewhen con-
versation would seem—to me at least—perfecdy congenial. If one of
them suffered some minor misfortune, such as falling down, Napwai
would laugh more heartily than he might otherwise have done. What
seemed strange to me was that throughout all this, it was as if none of
the accused had any idea that they were marked persons, and this
despite the high profile of Napwai's illness, and village gossip.
What all three suspects have in common is that they all objected to
him marrying Silo Nepane, the daughter of Sau'ute and Makasena
Somori: Inane and Naupate because they too had designs on Silo,
and Bisara because he was Silo's elder brother. Napwai said that Silo
knew nothing of these accusations, but had confined herself to her
parents' house throughout the time he had been ill, weeping and
refusing all requests to come out. He had been most upset that she
had not come to visit him, but had put this down to pressure from
Bisara. He was distraught; "even if she no longer wished to marry
me, I would still receive her." For himself, he was still determined to
make her his wife, but how could he with potential affines threaten-
ing and attempting to kill him? Napwai considered that his only
option was to flee to Amahai or Ambon, as it was quite intolerable to
live in an atmosphere where your life was constantly threatened. If he
had the money, he said, he would come back with me to England.
He had also considered cutting his hair and throwing away his
karanunu, the distinctive red head-cloth worn by all adult Nuaulu
males. Both the uncutting of hair and the wearing of the kamntmu
are regarded as crucial indicators of Nuaulu-ness, by Nuaulu and
non-Nuaulu alike. To reject them represents a dramatic severing of
emotional and cultural bonds, and is not done lightly. The episode
was finally settled by bringing Napwai's marriage to Silo forward.
Despite the opposition of Bisara, this action had the support of
Komisi, Hatarai, and Sau'ute, the elders whose views really mattered
 ROY ELLEN

in this case. The reasoning behind this was that a single man is more
vulnerable to sorcery in such circumstances, and that only marriage
could simultaneously alleviate Napwai's fears and fulfill his desires. If
necessary, thè determined course of action could be reinforced by
access to some tools of countersorcery.
What increased Napwai's distress was his recollection that the ini-
tial stages of his father's marriage to Alewa had been surrounded by a
similar menace, with certain prospective affines opposed to the
union. They were nevertheless married, though soon after Napwai
junior had himself been conceived, his father had been killed while
hunting, allegedly due to Matoke sorcery. His mother was also very
ill and only survived to give birth to Napwai after the performance of
countersorcery. Now what is significant here is the historical continu-
ity of enmity over two or three generations of Matoke and Somori.
When I returned to Rohua in 1973, Napwai and Silo had two chil-
dren: Loken, a little boy of one and a half, and Pinasapa, a girl less
than a year old. Inane had married Patima Nepane-nesinopu from
Hahuwalan, though Naupate did not remarry until some years later
and moved away from Rohua completely. Bisara went on to have an
emotional crisis of his own, culminating in his conversion to Protes-
tant Christianity as Buce. By 1973, he had married Rahiai (Ahir)
Matoke, the eldest daughter ofTeliam (Paulus).4

Case 3. Iako Matoke

At the time of my major Nuaulu fieldwork between 1969 and 1971,
Iako Matoke was head of the Matoke clan and had special ritual pow-
ers over and above those of other clan chiefs, particularly with respect
to the land; hence the usual Indonesian translation of his role as tuan
tanah, "lord of the land." When I returned to Seram in 1973, Iako
was undergoing an emotional crisis; he seemed to have disengaged
from all but the most essential social interactions, confining himself
to his own house and rarely receiving visitors. There was evidence of
clinical symptoms—a sore throat and coughing—and in my view he
had a severe bronchial ailment. For Iako, the cause was Hatarai's sor-
cery. Apparently, Hatarai (see case 2) was angry with him for with-
holding permission for his son Tuisa to marry Unsa, Hatarai's daugh-
ter. The reason he gave me was that he thought there was too much
sorcery in Hatarai's descent group. (My suspicion at the time was
that it was far more likely to boil down to the kind of marriage
Anger, Anxiety, and Sorcery: Eastern Indonesia 89

32 4 Q 33

34 35 36 4_ J) 37
lako

38

39 4. 40 ó 41
Lo

42 4. 43
32. Nauhua Sonawe 38. Tuisa Matoke
33. Pekahatu Matoke 39. Anton Makanoneng
34. Willem Soo 40. Soo
35. Hoa (Martha) Matoke 41. Lo
36. Iako Matoke 42. Liza Makanoneng
37. Sukamawa Sonawe 43. Gradus Latuheku
Figure 2. Relevant genealogical connections of Iako
and Lo: Cases 3 and 4

demanded by Hatarai.) Iako was much distressed and claimed not to

want anything to do with sorcery again—he surmised that "Allah"
(he used this term rather than Anahatana or Tuhan) was angry with
him—that is why he did not want Tuisa to marry Unsa.
After I had left the field in 1971, Iako had fallen severely ill and
had been exploring the possibilities of treatment by a Muslim curer in
Tamilou. It seems that a condition of this treatment, or its conse-
quence—I was unable to untangle the details of the affair—had been
that he converted to Islam. He removed his karanunu, cut his hair
short, and remained a Muslim for over a year, with the name Sale-
mane (Suleiman); the name of his wife became Mariam, and that of
his youngest daughter, Siti. When in due course he recovered from
whatever it was that had been ailing him, the social and mental pres-
sures on him were so great that he decided to revert to an animist way
of life. In order to do this he made a gift to the ancestors of five large
plates and five fathoms of red cloth. Iako died, a distressed and con-
fused man, in 1980.
90 ROY ELLEN

Case 4. Lo
Lo was the daughter of a Chinese father (Willem Soo) and Martha
Matoke, the Christian sister of Iako (see case 3). She had been mar-
ried and separated three times, the third time to Naupate (see case 2),
and had no living children, all having died within a few weeks of their
birth. On 10 July 1975, Lo reported to me that her mother was ill—
to be precise, that she had a chronic nosebleed. I gave her some
advice, but it would not stop. Lo suspected sorcery and asked Komisi
to divine the cause, but he told her to rely on my medication. I con-
tinued to see Lo intermittendy after this, but there was never any
more talk of sorcery.

Discussion
Nuaulu may often invoke sorcery as an explanation of a trivial suf-
fering and think no more about it; indeed, specific accusations extend-
ing to anything that might be regarded as a discrete case are relatively
few in number. Such minor instances are exemplified by case 4 above,
that involving Lo. Frequently they are even more transitory than this,
and amount to no more than airing in public the possibility that some
relatively minor complaint—such as a headache or the stubbing of a toe
on a stone—might be due to sorcery. Occasionally, as in a seance, the
possibility of sorcery as the cause of a particular misfortune may be
mooted, but then dropped as some more plausible explanation is
found. I attended many seances during my Nuaulu fieldwork and
always kept a record of explanations accepted for the misfortunes
treated. Only two were ever unambiguously attributed to sorcery. On
the other hand, sorcery accusations are usually dealt with through
divination (turn), and would not ordinarily be expected to come up at a
seance, where the cause of misfortune has usually been predetermined
as the displeasure of ancestral spirits. My records of rum sessions are
much more fragmentary and would not serve as a basis for measuring
the incidence of sorcery accusations. Nevertheless, full-blown sorcery
very soon becomes public knowledge and accessible to a moderately
attentive ethnographer, partly because it is so unusual and attracts com-
ment, and partly because it is associated with victims who present their
distress in terms of highly stereotypical and recognizable behaviors. For
these reasons I am pretty confident that I got to know about (though
by no means always fully or authoritatively) all major cases which
occurred while I was in the field. By "major" cases, I mean here those
Anger, Anxiety, and Sorcery: Eastern Indonesia 91

which combine a subjectively assessed exceptional misfortune with

some kind of action to discover its cause and the identity of any
sorcerer.
What is clear is that, from an analytical point of view, concrete cases
amounting to anything more than the occasional surmise are so rare
that, even if a general social stress model were appropriate, the material
would not be up to testing it. Similarly, sorcerers are accused so infre-
quently that the Nuaulu themselves do not consider them to be a social
menace, as might be the case in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Sorcerers
are regarded as existing in small numbers, but only if you cross them
personally are they a source of concern. They are not public enemies;
they are a private burden. Curiously also, those who are reported to be
sorcerers, and who are approached on account of their expertise in
countersorcery, are also among those most likely to accuse others of
sorcerizing them. In Rohua I heard numerous stories of Konane and
Komisi—among the most socially salient of sorcerers—accusing each
other. But perhaps it is not surprising that sorcerers themselves should
be particularly vulnerable to the consequences of their art.
Although specific accusations were relatively few, there is no doubt
that Nuaulu believe sorcery to be a potent and omnipresent force in
their lives and willingly talk at great length about it as a psychic force in
the cosmos. Views vary as to the actual amount of sorcery in Rohua.
Komisi did not think that there was much, just a small number of sor-
cerers who were not particularly active. In contrast, Iako was obsessed
with the phenomenon, convinced that it was rampant. But then, he
himself was a nearly paranoid victim, denied access to the necessary
skills to reciprocate by the early death of his own father, whom he
acknowledges was a sorcerer. It is generally agreed that the most power-
ful individual sorcerers in Rohua are Hatarai, Konane, Sorita, and
Komisi.
Iako used to say that there was much sorcery on Seram as a whole,
but that it was stronger in Manusela, which had a reputation for simcv-
sima (v. sima: to tell, to inform), a kind of powerful magic that the
Nuaulu claim to have lost since moving from the mountains. Thus,
some places are said to have a greater reputation for sorcery than others,
and in addition to Manusela in the central highlands, the westerly
islands of Manipa and Burn were mentioned by other Nuaulu. In these
places sorcerers are claimed to metamorphose into birds and crocodiles.
One group feared and admired throughout the central Moluccas for
their powers are the highland Muslim "Bati" of east Seram, who are
said to be able to take the form of deer, fish, and birds. As birds they
92 ROY ELLEN

can even exert force in Ambon. Interestingly, Riedel (1886), writing a

century earlier, says that the south coast of west Seram and Rajeli on
Burn swarm with sorcerers. These latter are able to steal souls, fly, levi-
tate, devour the intestines of sleeping persons, and take their spirit (p.
359). He also notes (p. I l l ) that sorcerers can take the form of dogs,
pigs, cats, birds, snakes, and so on, and also the leaves of the breadfruit
(Artocarpus incisa). Following Riedel, Stresemann (1923) reports that if
one of these leaves touches the enemy of a sorcerer he will drop down
dead. But although Nuaulu folk wisdom asserts that powerful sorcerers
tend to be outsiders, in practice those accused—and this much is sup-
ported by the cases—are more likely to be insiders or geographically
local outsiders.5
The infrequency of specific accusations of sorcery and the skewed
social profile of those accused can perhaps better be understood if we
look more'broadly at the ways in which Nuaulu explain misfortune.

1. Most personal or collective misfortune (illness, death, natural

disasters, poor hunting or harvests) is put down to ancestral retribution
for contravention of custom: failure to honor a taboo or the incorrect
performance ofritual{monne). Certain specific types of misfortune may
be explained in terms of the retribution of a particular category of
ancestral spirit. Thus, congenital abnormalities are attributed to the
displeasure of nubune, the female ancestral spirit-guardians of the bosune
(menstruation huts where birth also takes place), activated by some
infringement—often a very minor one—of birth or pregnancyritual,or
by some outstanding grievance against the mother or other female
members of the clan with respect to some other misdemeanor con-
nected with female ritual performance or duties. Other misfortunes
may be ascribed to the actions of particular, named ancestral spirits.
2. Some misfortunes are explained with reference to the high spirit,
Anahatana, though it is seldom given the credit for recovery. Good
death (death from old age) is the work of Anahatana, also thought to
be the agency through which Western medicines (such as injections) are
made efficacious. I have heard Anahatana invoked with respect to vari-
ous infections, epidemics, deficiency diseases, and abnormalities. I sus-
pect that Anahatana is more significant now as an explanation than pre-
viously, incorporating Christian and Muslim conceptions of divine
intervention and being in particular associated with things identified as
the consequence of contact with the outside world.
3. Misfortune may also be the work of a range of nonancestral and
essentially evil spirits (both Nuaulu and non-Nuaulu), though attack
may in itself be due to carelessness, or not taking the appropriate magi-
cal precautions. Malaria is often attributed to the invasion of evil spir-
Artßer, Anxiety, and Sorcery: Eastern Indonesia 93

its, but although they cause death, they always manage to escape the
body at the moment of expiration. In general, though, evil spirits serve
to explain only petty misfortunes.

O f these three alternative kinds of explanation, by far the most

important is the intervention of ancestral spirits, both in terms o f fre-
quency and the significance o f the misfortunes suffered. This must
surely reflect the patrician structure of Nuaulu society, in which ances-
tors serve as organizational foci, the means o f legitimating the authority
o f ascribed leaders, and a channel for social control. In other words, I
am invoking here a fairly standard functionalist explanation (see, e.g.,
Freedman 1967:90-91). It is virtually impossible to measure the inci-
dence o f explanations, but we might say that whereas most misfortune
is explained through structural tension between ancestors and the liv-
ing, sorcery probably accounts for less than 10 percent of reported mis-
fortunes—focally, those where a victim and his or her advisers consider
there to be prima facie grounds for believing that someone with access
to the wherewithal o f sorcery has been angered. From the point of view
o f physical symptoms, sorcery is associated with infections o f the stom-
ach, vomiting, and the spitting of blood, though the case material sug-
gests that the need to identify a likely antagonist may easily override the
significance o f particular physical conditions.
What unites the cases described in detail here is that they all concern
tensions between individuals in structurally predictable dilemmas. In
the case of Patima Sonawe (see fig. 1), the accused was first her hus-
band's brother-in-law in connection with an allegation o f illicit (in fact,
incestuous) marriage, and only secondly a rank outsider in a dispute
over land. Napwai's case identifies sexual jealousy reinforced by affinal
enmity carried over from a previous generation plus affinal enmity in
the present generation. As far as the latter is concerned, it is perfectly
understandable that elder brothers should object to their sister's poten-
tial husband (protecting the honor o f sisters is part of their job); what is
rather unusual is that Silo should be Napwai's mother's brother's
daughter (fig. 1). That is, Silo and Napwai are in a nemakae (ne: third-
person prefix of inalienable possession; makae: strong) relationship,
which is terminologically prescribed for alliance and is still the preferred
marital union. In many ways, the Iako case (figs. 1 and 2) is the most
complex. We should note that the social tension between Matoke and
the Napwai coterie (Hatarai was Napwai's stepfather) is part o f the con-
text, though more significant, in my view, is Iako's long-term depres-
sion linked to a history of social marginality. Although he occupied
94 ROY ELLEN

what was undeniably the most important traditional ritual role in

Rohua, he was at the same time closely related to persons who had con-
verted to either Christianity or Islam and had many non-Nuaulu
affines.
Despite the general direction in which the case material seems to lead
us, all Nuaulu who were asked for general statements on the origin of
sorcery pointed to outsiders, either to groups which are in predictable
relations of tension with the Nuaulu (such as the Muslims of Sepa and
Tamilou, village alliance partners [pela], or traders) or which have a spe-
cial reputation as sorcerers. So, while at the level of shared ideology sor-
cery attacks are regarded as coming from outsiders, and particularly
from outside groups with a reputation for sorcery and groups where the
potential for conflict is high, in cases of specific charges, the accusations
that stick tend to be against persons to whom the Nuaulu are closely
related, for the most part other Nuaulu, always local and often genea-
logically linked. This is perhaps understandable and juxtaposes an ideal
(that sorcery is only a menace from outsiders) with experience: those
most prone to accusations—that is, those in relations of continuing and
aggravated conflict—tend to be those with whom accusers interact on a
daily basis. This assumption may seem obvious when one reflects on
the fewer opportunities for attacks by outsiders, especially given that
sorcery is usually reckoned to operate through contagion in food, stim-
ulants such as tobacco or betel nut, and personal leavings. It is never-
theless a lesson in not accepting what informants szy generally happens
as being the same as what actually transpires.
Finally, what surprised me in the field—no doubt influenced as I was
by Zande pragmatism and intellectualism as filtered through Evans-
Pritchard and a generation of students inspired by him—was the tense
and emotionally charged discourse and feelings surrounding the cases.
In an attempt to persuade the Euro-American thinking classes that
witchcraft was a legitimate and utterly "reasonable" mode of thought,
analogous to other forms of rationality, some anthropologists have
been too eager to play down feelings, emotion, and affect; in an
attempt to bring the mystical within the proper orbit of Durkheimian
theory and to avoid the problem of how anxiety, stress, or frustration
might be measured (Marwick 1965), they have also been too eager to
suppress anything that suggested a psychological explanation. Yet the
Nuaulu evidence strongly suggests that any accusation which consti-
tutes more than an idle surmise to explain a petty discomfort is accom-
panied by great personal distress. The reason for this is partly due to
stress in intimate or day-to-day relationships, but also partly to depres-
Aryer, Anxiety, and Sorcery: Eastern Indonesia 95

sion, neuroses, even anger, and other clinically defined pathological

states of mind.

Conclusion
I have tried in this chapter to present a broad outline of Nuaulu
beliefs concerning kau ostme—how it works, its epidemiology, transmis-
sion, divination, countermeasures taken against it, and its place in a
general theory of causation. I have done this in relation to a small num-
ber of fairly detailed (but still partial) case histories, which I suggest are
indicative rather than representative. In the second part of the chapter I
have concentrated on three main issues raised by the data. The first is
that while the cases are united in being concerned with tensions
between closely related individuals in structurally predictable dilem-
mas, when we examine generalizations about the sources of malevo-
lence it is outsiders who are mentioned most frequently. The second
issue is that insofar as sorcery accusations can be "measured" at all,
there appears to be an unexpected disjunction between the general
awareness of sorcery as a threat, as reflected in daily discourse and "triv-
ial" accusations, and the infrequency of persistent accusations linked to
major misfortunes that might be said to constitute "a case." Third, I
note that mechanistic "rational" interpretations appear to understate
the evident relevance of emotional conditions. In this I am challenging
the conventional sociological consensus that many—in Britain at least-
still teach, even though they would not completely own up to believ-
ing it in public. I agree with Beidelman (1970:354), Brain (1970:162),
and Golomb (1985:182) that the delusional aspects of accusation, its
connection with disturbed behaviors of other kinds, is a pointer to per-
sonal problems as well as social ones, although in saying so I would
emphatically deny that personhood is independent of the relations into
which people enter. Following Wallace (1970:238), we might better
understand mystical discourse of the kind involved in sorcery accusa-
tion as a means of articulating, and therefore in some way coping with,
psychological problems, in the same way that the outward signs of
"hysteria," "neurosis," and "schizophrenia" have been regarded as a
means of stimulating the concern of others and signaling the need for
social and emotional support (Szasz 1974). The first two issues, which
amount to disjunctions between cultural expectations and experience,
make some sense if we accept that it is only in situations of personal
mental distress, rather than simply physical suffering, discomfort, or
annoyance, that sorcery becomes a sypiificcmt explanation.
96 ROY ELLEN

Notes and References

1. The Nuaulufieldworkon which the present analysis is based was con-
ducted for eighteen months in 1969-1971, for two short periods of three
months each in 1973 and 1975, and for two brief visits in 1981 and 1985. On
all occasions the research was sponsored by the Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan
Indonesia (Indonesian Academy of Sciences); it has been variously funded by
the British Social Science Research Council, the London-Cornell Project for
East and Southeast Asia, the Central Research Fund of the University of Lon-
don, the Hayter Travel Awards scheme, the University of Kent at Canterbury,
the British Academy, and the Nuffield Foundation. To all of these bodies I
would like to express my thanks.
2. Suangi is also a term used to describe the practitioner. Stresemann
(1923:359) says that sorcery is called suawai in Paulohi, sanajhi in Manusela,
and mamurin in Kemarian; in Ambonese Malay the generic term kulak is also
heard. The earliest Moluccan account of smngi that I have been able to find is
in Antonio Galvao's Hist6ria das Molucas, written about 1544. Galvao tells us—
speaking almost certainly of Ternate—that smtygps are killed when rajas or
other important persons fell ill to prevent them devouring the heart (Jacobs
1971:181). Rumphius (de Beaufort 1959:58) provides us with the first refer-
ence to ikan suangi, a term widely applied to certain spinous or poisonous
fishes, usually Scorpaenids.
3. These are known throughout most of the central Moluccas by the
Ambonese Malay term matakau; see Stresemann 1923:360.
4. Tichelman (1925:679) provides an interesting historical footnote to this
case, noting that at the beginning of 1917 one Malaposia (who must be the
same as Makapusia Somori in my records: FFFB of the present Napwai), eldest
son of Patih Napwai, murdered his father, wife, and four children, convinced
that they had bewitched him. Tichelman's purpose in citing the case appears to
have been merely to illustrate what he regarded as the backwardness of primi-
tive thought; in the context of my own work it dramatically emphasizes the
possible background to one chronic "family" case history involving sorcery.
5. Another possibly significant difference between the realm of belief and
what actually happens can be found in relation to accusations against women.
Women as a whole are regarded (by men at least) as common and particularly
dangerous sorcerers. I have already referred to pinam notune, the spirits of a
mother and child that have died together in childbirth. Apparently reporting
on the Muslim and Christian inhabitants of Kajeli, Martin (1894:385-386)
tells us that female sorcerers there are reputed to eat the intestines of living chil-
dren, excepting when these are descendants of their husbands' clan. Unless
care is taken to protect the graves of children, sorcerers will also remove intes-
tines from recently dead children. Female sorcerers are thought to dance a ter-
rible memri at fiiU moon. Similarly, Stresemann (1923:359-360) repeats a
story from Ribbe in which the severe illness in a raja of a domain in southeast
Seram is blamed on two women, a mother and daughter. Several days later the
accused are caught: the kin of the raja, believing that the angry spirits of the
raja require retribution, strangle the mother; the daughter is fortunate enough
to escape. Despite everything, the raja does not improve, and a few days later,
Außer, Anxiety, and Sorcery: Eastern Indonesia 97

as the illness moves toward death, his family decide that the daughter, too,
must be found and strangled if the raja is to recover. As we have seen, in
Nuaulu practice at least, women are seldom accused, a discrepancy for which I
can find no ready explanation.

de Beaufort, L. F. 1959. Rumphius's fishes. In Rumphius memorial volume, ed.

H. C. D. de Wit. Baarn: HollandiaN. V.
Beidelman, T. O. B. 1970. Towards more open theoretical interpretations. In
Witchcraft confessions and accusations, ed. M. Douglas, 351-357. ASA
Monograph in Social Anthropology 9. London: Tavistock Publications.
Brain, R. 1970. Child-witches. In Witchcraft confessions and accusations, ed.
M. Douglas, 161-183. ASA Monograph in Social Anthropology 9. Lon-
don: Tavistock Publications.
Freedman, M. 1967. Ancestor worship: Two facets of the Chinese case. In
Social organization: Essays presented to Raymond Firth, ed. M. Freedman.
London: Frank Cass.
Golomb, L. 1985. An anthropology of curing in multiethnic Thailand. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Jacobs, H. T. T. M. 1971. A treatise on the Moluccas (c. 1544): Probably the pre-
liminary version ofAntonio Gahao's lost "Historia das Molucas." Rome: Jesuit
Historical Institute.
Martin, K. 1894. Beisen in den Molukken, in Ambon, den Uliassem, Seran
(Ceram) undBuru. Leiden: Brill.
Marwick, M. 1965. Some problems in the sociology of sorcery and witchcraft.
In African systems of thought, ed. M. Fortes and G. Dieterlen. London:
Oxford University Press, for the International African Institute.
Riedel, J. G. F. 1886. De sluik- en kroesharige rassen tusschen Selebes en Papua. The
Hague: Nijhoff.
Stresemann, E. 1923. Religiose Gebrauche auf Seran. Tijdschrift voor Indische
Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 62:305-424.
Szasz, T. 1974. Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the psychiatric dehumanisation of
man. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Tichelman, G. L. 1925. De onder-afdeeling Amahei (Seran). Tijdschrift van het
Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap te Amsterdam 42:653-
724.
Wallace, A. F. C. 1970. Culture and personality. 2d ed.. New York: Random
House.
 6
Social and Symbolic Aspects
of the Witch among the
Nage of Eastern Indonesia
GREGORY FORTH

A COMMON FEATUKE of the social landscape of eastern Indonesia,

the ideological figure of the witch is probably nowhere more promi-
nent than among the inhabitants of the island of Flores. This, at any
rate, is the impression conveyed by two general surveys of Flores witch-
craft, one by Penard (1929) , the other by Bader (1968). A belief in
witches may not be found quite everywhere on Flores: Verheijen
(1951:16) says it is absent in the western region of Manggarai. But
witchcraft is without question a concept of major importance for the
Nage, who inhabit the central part of the island. Ideas about witches
play a significant part in their cosmology, eschatology, and etiology,
and they inform a variety of mortuary rites and procedures concerned
with illness. Like neighboring groups, Nage also possess a type of tradi-
tional practitioner, the ton mali, who in earlier times was largely con-
cerned with detecting witchcraft and identifying individual witches
(Forth 1991).
A comprehensive explanation of the genesis and importance of the
idea of the witch in Nage society is well beyond the scope of this chap-
ter. My objective is therefore the more limited one of linking symbolic
and ideological features of the witch idea with aspects of traditional
Nage social order. To a large extent, this involves situating the witch,
defined in terms of the powers such a being is supposed to possess, in
relation to normal humans, the soul, and free spirits. In this way,
it should also be possible to illuminate connections between Nage
ideas about witches and apparent patterns of witchcraft accusation and
persecution.

99
100 GREGORY FORTH

There is not much that needs to be said about the Nage in general,
other than that they are a population of cultivators and stock raisers
who reside to the north and west of the volcano named Ebu Lobo in
central Flores. At present the great majority of Nage are converts to
Catholicism. Yet their recently acquired faith seems to have had little
impact on their belief in, and ideas concerning, witches and witchcraft.
The information presented here was collected during four visits to
Flores made between 1984 and 1991 and was mosdy obtained in the
region of the main Nage village of Bo'a Wae. A few data are drawn from
villages in the Keo region, which is located to the south of the Ebu
Lobo volcano and is closely related, both culturally and linguistically,
to Bo'a Wae and other parts of Nage.1

The Image of the Witch

The majority of Nage ideas bearing upon the image of the witch
are strikingly similar to ones found in a great many other areas of the
world. For the Nage, a witch (polo, atapolo), is a person, either male or
female,2 who is categorically evil and whose natural disposition is to
harm other people, mostly by mystical or invisible means. As Nage
often stress, witches are human beings, not spirits. Yet they are distin-
guished from other people by the possession of a special spirit, or type
of soul, called wa. It is the wa of the witch that leaves his body, usually
at night, and in animal or human form then goes out in search of vic-
tims, an activity for which Nage have a special word, mutt. During this
time the body of the witch remains asleep and is able to awaken only
once the wa has reentered the sleeping body. The witch and his spirit
are so closely identified that Nage employ the term polo interchangeably
to refer to the spirit—the actual agent of harm—and to the human being
who possesses such a spirit.3
Nage witches share a variety of other symbolic associations with their
counterparts in other parts of Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and the
world. They operate at night and rest during the day. When encoun-
tered at night, witches sometimes reveal themselves as lights orfires(apt
polo), which ascend and descendfromtrees and are able to move, divide
and rejoin, and change size; these illuminations are said to be the saliva
of a witch. As elsewhere, witches among Nage are able to fly and to dis-
appear. They are also associated in several ways with animals. Thus
witches (or their wa) can assume the form of various animals, both
domestic and wild. When it leaves and reenters the witch's body, or
when it invades the body of a victim, the wa takes the form of a small
Aspects of the Witch among the Nage 101

animal—a mouse, snake, frog, worm, locust, wasp, or beetle. At night,

the cries of birds, particularly owls, indicate the presence of witches and
the possibility of imminent attack, as do the shrill sounds made by cer-
tain insects. A cat meowing close to a house or a dog seen suddenly just
outside a doorway are similarly inauspicious portents. Witches also
resemble animals insofar as they eat their food uncooked, a trait that
further connects them with malevolent free spirits; placatory offerings
made to witches therefore typically consist of raw meat. Yet another
link with animals is the notion that improper behavior with an animal,
especially talking to it, will turn the perpetrator into a witch (Forth
1989a). One expression of this idea appears in Nage creation myths,
where it is told how a portion of the first human beings became witches
when they spoke to a large snake that offered them wealth.
Nage thought associates witches with several sorts of inversions. I
have already shown that they invert night and day. Things that should
be done in an anticlockwise order or sequence {kago mob) witches will
characteristically do clockwise {kago said). Since Nage conceive of this
procedure as a movement to the left, the notion further instances one
of several contexts where witches are associated with the left, the inaus-
picious side. While normal people are supposed to sleep with the head
in any direction but downstream (lau), witches naturally breach this
rule as well. According to the same principle, as normal people are
always buried with the head pointing toward the Ebu Lobo volcano—
that is, in the "up" or "upstream, landwards" direction (zeta)—
witches should be buried, outside the village, with the head pointing
seawards (lau). Inversion is further expressed in the idea that the spirit
(wa) of a witch leaves and reenters his body by way of the anus. The
soul (mae) of a normal person, in contrast, always does this by way of
the head. With reference to this idea, Nage characterize witches as hav-
ing large red anuses, owing to the regular exit and entry of the witch
spirit by way of this orifice.
The use of symbolic inversion to express moral and other opposi-
tions is of course not unexpected in an eastern Indonesian context and,
indeed, it is commonly encountered in ideas concerning witches and
witchcraft the world over. Among the Nage, inversion is furthermore
prominent among those features witches share with certain categories
of free spirits. Nevertheless, a more salient characteristic of witches for
the Nage, being the most often mentioned, is their taste for human
flesh. More than anything else, the Nage witch is a cannibal, as vari-
ously expressed in the partly connected ideas that they eat recently
buried corpses, or the transformed souls of their victims, and that they
102 GREGORY FORTH

invisibly consume living bodies. Cannibalism, moreover, figures both

as a typical means of attack and as one way of becoming a witch. As a
quintessential property of the witch, the attribution of cannibalism
is consistent with the kinds of social relationships most commonly
involved in witchcraft suspicions and accusations, as I endeavor to
show later on.4

Modus Operandi
As mentioned, the witch usually works at night, when the victim
is asleep. In order to cause illness or death, Nage witches (or their wa)
can operate either on the victim's body (weki) or on his soul (mae).
They may attack the body by spearing, beating, or stabbing it with
invisible weapons or by firing unseen missiles, leaving wounds and
marks that are apparent only to the practitioners called toa mali.
Alternatively, the witch's spirit, in the form of a small animal, can enter
the victim, thus causing his abdomen to swell. Death is the probable
outcome, but if the victim recovers, then he too becomes a witch. A
witch can obtain the same result by placing human flesh (keti ata,
ghond), usually disguised as an insect or human hair, in the victim's
food, which in addition to abdominal swelling may cause jaundice,
excessive salivation, and "shrinkage of the limbs."5 A much less serious
way that a witch might operate directly on a body is by pressing down
on a sleeping victim (polo dhuki, "a witch presses down"). This
produces the sensation of having something heavy on top of one, and
of being unable to move or cry out. If, while this is happening, the
sleeper sees a face in a dream, this will be the face of the attacking witch.
Other forms of witch attack involve operating on the victim's soul.
In fact, this is probably the more characteristic idea among Nage. As
elsewhere in Indonesia and other parts of the world, Nage maintain
that the soul can temporarily leave the body, especially during sleep.
Dreams are thus interpreted as experiences of the wandering soul, and
it is during the soul's absence that it is especially vulnerable to attack
from witches, as well asfrommalignfreespirits. In this connection it is
worth registering the more general point that ideas regarding the
modus operandi of witches in this society, as elsewhere in eastern Indo-
nesia, are to a very large degree bound up with beliefs about the soul,
which in turn are related systematically to ideas regarding various kinds
of free spirits. In fact, the Nage witch could probably be no better
defined than as a human being whose soul, or internal spirit (wa),
behaves like maleficent free spirits by attacking the souls (mae) of other
Aspects ofthe Witch among the Nage 103

human beings. 6 1 suspect this definition would fit many other Indone-
sian societies as well. As I further discuss below, moreover, the relation
of the wa and the body of the witch can be seen to replicate that of the
witch—considered as an intrusive outside force that has become part of
a social interior—and the social body.
In order to harm a victim, a witch may beat his soul with rattan (polo
hadi), or capture it and immerse it in water, or place it in a hole that the
witch then covers with a stone. Witches might also catch a soul and
take it to a village inhabited by souls of the dead; if it is not retrieved,
the person will die. This notion seems related to another idea—namely,
that deceased souls are taken to the land of the dead by the witches
who killed them. The implication here, that all deaths might be caused
by witches, was confirmed by an informant who stated that this used to
be the general belief among the Nage. The existence of other explana-
tions for death and illness, however, clearly contradicts it.
As should be apparent from the foregoing, Nage witches are gener-
ally credited with the capture of human souls, a notion expressed in the
standard phrasepob kaka mae ("a witch captures, kidnaps a soul"). 7 As
to what they then do with them, probably the most common represen-
tation is that a witch will transform a captured soul into an animal, usu-
ally a water buffalo, and then slaughter it to bring about the victim's
death. In the same vein, witches are spoken of as leading away or driv-
ing a captured soul (pob tula mae) after the manner of someone herding
animals. The dominant image of the witch as cannibal is connected
with these ideas, for, after killing it, witches consume the slaughtered
animal's flesh, according to some accounts after transforming it into a
human corpse. Actually, the way Nage represent this form of attack is
somewhat various. Thus, sometimes it is simply said that witches
slaughter an animal to bring about a person's death, or that a witch will
place a captured soul inside the body of a buffalo that is about to be
slaughtered (by someone else). I have also heard that witches might
place a victim's soul inside a smaller animal, a pig or chicken, and then
slaughter it to cause death. Nevertheless, the basic idea remains the
same, namely, that by operating on the soul while it is separated from
the body, and especially by somehow slaughtering it, the victim can be
killed and devoured.
According to the most elaborate description of this process I
obtained, a witch will capture a soul and raise it like a buffalo, provid-
ing it with food and water. While the soul is thus held captive, the vic-
tim himself may appear more or less healthy; at worst he will appear
dusty and dirty and his body will not glow, even after bathing. Then,
104 GREGORY FORTH

all of a sudden, the person will die, without having been noticeably ill
beforehand. The sudden death of course reflects the slaughter of the
soul, in buffalo form, by the witch.
While it is a single witch who captures a soul, it should be noted that
a group of witches usually participate in the feast that follows the soul's
slaughter. In this connection, Nage say that the principal witch must
explain his reason for capturing the soul—that is, how the victim
offended him—before the transformation and sacrifice of the soul can
take place. The principal then receives the head of the animal—which is
actually that of the human victim—in a way that accords with the prac-
tice when ordinary Nage slaughter buffalo. The more general idea here
is that, before killing someone, witches will meet in a group to discuss
what punishment is appropriate for a person who has offended one of
their number. In my experience, however, Nage always represent the
punitive act, the killing of the victim, as something carried out by a sin-
gle witch rather than by a collectivity.
As all this shows, witches are thought to attack particular victims
because of some offense done to them. In fact, Nage also say that
witches are unable to harm someone simply because they dislike him;
they must always have an excuse, even if this requires manufacturing an
incident in which the witch can be seen to be slighted. The most usual
sort of offense is failing to respond to a request made by the witch.
Witch attacks are also often said to follow from debts. A witch might
attack someone for failing to repay a debt, or a creditor who presses too
hard for repayment might fall victim to the debtor, if the latter is a
witch.
The foregoing illustrates how Nage often depict witchcraft as involv-
ing a sort of spirit in material form, the witch's wa, acting upon the vic-
tim's soul (mac), also, eventually, in material form. At the same time,
Nage also speak of witches robbing graves and devouring corpses,
sometimes after turning these, rather than souls, into sacrificial animals.
One must therefore avoid being too categorical when stressing the spiri-
tual component of Nage ideas about witches. Even so, the usual impli-
cation in Nage tales of corpse-stealing witches is that the witch has
killed someone with the specific intention of eating his corpse, and it
seems that he will very often do so by first attacking the soul. Soul cap-
ture and slaughter and corpse stealing and eating therefore appear as
two stages in the same process.
Nage also speak of witches being able to harm people without spec-
ifying their precise manner of doing so. For example, if a witch is able
Aspects ofthe Witch among the Nage 105

to find the hidden site of a youth's circumcision ceremony, he will

somehow cause the wound to become infected. Witches are also credit-
ed with causing accidents—especially, it seems, hunting accidents where
men die after falling from a horse or being struck by a weapon. I cannot
be certain that Nage would attribute all forms of bad death to witch-
craft, as I never heard this stated categorically, but it seems likely that
any kind of violent death could be so explained.8 Witches are also capa-
ble of commanding poisonous snakes to bite people. Snakes, it will be
recalled, are also a form taken by the spirit (wa) of a witch.
As indicated, witches do harm not only by causing illness, physical
injury, and death. There are indeed various minor forms of distress that
Nage ascribe to witches. Generally, witches like to deceive, annoy, and
disturb people. To this end, a witch will, for example, temporarily
abduct a person (polo dhoko) who will later be found in a disheveled and
semiconscious state but otherwise apparendy unharmed. In this con-
nection, it is further said that witches carry people away over their
shoulders and suspended upside down, thus forcing the victim to lick
the witch's anus. This peculiar idea reveals not only another association
of witches with the anal orifice, that part of the anatomy from which
the witch's spirit emerges, but suggests as well a further instance of the
inverted character of the witch. Witches also harass people by making
them lose their way at night, by "hiding the path" (pob zoko zald).
Another, rather curious method a witch might employ to cause a dis-
turbance involves his rolling a chicken coop around in the middle of
the night, with the peeping sound of an invisible chicken coming from
inside. This is intended to scare people, something a witch might also
achieve during the daytime by assuming the form of a ferocious billy
goat with lowered horns. In either case, a person should not run away,
for if he does the witch will pursue, catch, and abduct him.
As a final note, it should be mentioned that witches can harm people
indirecdy, for example, by creating wind and rainstorms that damage
fields and houses. Witches are also able to command the noa, spirits
that bring pestilence to crops and disease to livestock. In fact, as Nage
remarked to me, there seems to be very little that witches cannot do. In
part, this is connected with their being, in effect, both spirit and
human, and their ability readily to cross the boundary between these
two realms. As humans, moreover, they are for the most part indistin-
guishable by outward physical marks from normal people, for there is
no visible trait that absolutely sets a witch apart, nor are possible indica-
tions displayed by all people who are witches.9
106 GREGORY FORTH

Witches, Free Spirits, and Toa Mali

At this point we should review the several ways witches resemble
kinds of free spirits (nitu, bapu, nod) that can also act malevolently
toward humans. Like witches, these spirits are able to disappear and to
change form; to take the form of animals (especially snakes and birds of
prey); and even to capture human souls. They are also said to be active
at night, although not exclusively so, and to engage in various practices
ordered inversely to those of normal humans. Spirits can also cause ill-
ness and death, and some are inclined to mischief. For example, free
spirits called nitu are able to abduct people or make them lose their way
just like witches. Moreover, certain instances of malevolent free spirits
take the rather specific form of an old man with a long beard. Witches,
too, can assume this shape, as in the legendary case of a trusted retainer
of the Nage leader 'Oga Ngole, who, appearing in this guise, used the
long beard as a cable to haul the corpse of a child he had killed by
witchcraft from its grave.
Perhaps the most interesting resemblance between witches and free
spirits, however, concerns mountain spirits that reside on the Ebu
Lobo volcano. Like humans, these spirits own water buffalo, but their
buffalo are in reality human beings; so each time the spirits slaughter an
animal, a human dies. Conversely, when Nage slaughter buffalo, partic-
ularly in rituals called pa sese, a mountain spirit meets his end (Forth
1989b). Here, one is immediately reminded of witches transforming
captured human souls into buffalo; indeed, it would appear that these
spirits, which appropriately enough are sometimes called polo bapu
(roughly, "spirit witches"), are supposed to harm human beings in
precisely the same way as are witches.
But there is an important difference between witches and mountain
spirits in this regard. Apart from the fact that humans can kill these
spirits in the form of buffalo, something that is not possible with
witches, Nage consider witches to be, in the first instance, not spirits
but human beings. Thus, while spirits and humans, when killing one
another as sacrificial buffalo, are both in effect attacking external ene-
mies, witches are, on the contrary, insiders who attack other members
of their own community, in the broadest sense, other human beings.
Put another way, witches are humans, or insiders, who behave toward
other humans like malign spirits, or outsiders. This fits well with the
fact that Nage attribute maleficence emanating from outside the com-
munity, not to human adversaries belonging to other communities or
to the witchcraft of neighboring ethnic groups, but to malevolent free
Aspects ofthe Witch among the Nage 107

spirits. Accordingly, as I later show, Nage witchcraft concerns the inte-

rior of the community and often the closest, or "most internal," of
social relations.
Yet another connection between witches and free spirits is the idea of
the latter as a source, and it would appear the ultimate source, of witch-
craft power. Specifically, Nage hold that men who endeavor to obtain
favor or special advantages from spirits but fail to do so because they are
tricked by them, or fail to pass tests that they set, will in consequence
become witches. Since one of the main benefits obtained from this sort
of spirit quest is the power of the toa mali (diviners, magicians), tradi-
tional functionaries whose work largely consists of detecting and identi-
fying witches, free spirits are identified as the source of anti-witchcraft.
The powers of a toa mali are in fact very similar to those of a witch, and
partly for this reason—though one could identify deeper causes as well
(see Forth 1991 )—toa mali are themselves commonly suspected of being
witches. Indeed, the only person I have come across who admits to
being a witch, evidently to put people in awe of him, is a toa mali.
At the same time, these practitioners seem rarely, if ever, to have
been accused of or punished for specific acts of witchcraft, a circum-
stance which, as Nage affirmed, is attributable to their usefulness as
witch-finders, healers, magicians, and general diviners, as well as to the
fear that they might do harm to their accusers. Unlike witches, toa mali
—as toa mali—also do not possess a special spirit (wa). Thus, while they
are credited with the ability to cause illness and death, they do so by
means of what we should better call either sorcery or some form of soul
projection accomplished during sleep. Otherwise, the toa mali occupy a
position very similar to witches in the Nage scheme of things, since
they too are able to participate in both the human and the spirit world.
But being closer to normal humans, and in accordance with the fact
that they have not been tricked or otherwise defeated by spirits, the
practitioners are able to mediate between humans and witches, as well
as between humans and spirits; and in both instances their mediation
can be to the benefit of other people.
It should be quite clear that witches and free spirits, as well as the
harmful practices of some toa mali, provide the Nage with alternative
explanations of human suffering, especially of sickness and death. To
some degree, particular symptoms or manifestations are ascribed to
witches rather than to other causes. For example, abdominal swelling
seems to have a special association with witch attacks, as might sudden
death preceded by no manifest illness and death from accidents. Even
so, not only are there many conditions that are not definitely or exclu-
108 GREGORY FORTH

sively attributed to any particular kind of agent, but the evidence sug-
gests that factors besides physical symptoms can affect whether an ill-
ness is ascribed to witchcraft or not. One of these is, of course, the psy-
chological state of the sufferer, particularly if he thinks there is someone
who wishes to do him harm. Another factor is whether or not a toa malt
is called to diagnose or treat an illness, since the Nage know other kinds
of healers and methods of diagnosis as well. Thus, it is reasonable to
expect that an illness or a death will more often be attributed to a witch
when a toa matt is consulted.10

Accusations and Suspicions

Especially before the imposition of colonial rule by the Dutch in
1908, Nage did publicly accuse individuals of witchcraft and did punish
those found guilty. I have no statistical information on the incidence of
accusations in the past, and it would probably now be difficult to amass
reliable data of this sort. Nevertheless, my general impression, derived
from conversations with knowledgeable informants and based espe-
cially on the existence of several well-known cases in the Bo'a Wae
region, is that accusations and actions taken against alleged witches
were of regular occurrence during the last century. While the advent of
colonial rule and subsequently a national administration have no doubt
had an effect on the frequency of public accusations and on the inci-
dence of killings and other punishments among Nage, the practice of
accusing people of witchcraft continued well into the colonial period.11
I also have several reports of the murder of witches after the begin-
ning of the colonial period, the most recent one relating to the mid-fif-
ties. Probably in the 1920s, a nobleman from the village of 'Abu was
imprisoned in Java for killing two of his slaves, a husband and wife
whom he suspected of causing the death of his child. This he did by
burying them alive. Burial alive was also the method used in other cases
I heard about. Thus, sometime during the last century, a couple of
slave rank and their five daughters are reported to have been buried
alive near Pajo Mala, a village in the Keo region, just to the south of
Nage. Whether burial alive has any special significance connected with
the image of the witch in central Flores I am unable to say. There were,
however, other means employed to despatch accused witches, includ-
ing shooting and pushing them off high cliffs or into gullies. Several
named locations are still known to have been used for this latter pur-
pose. Evidently, then, Nage had no single special method of killing
witches.12
Aspects ofthe Witch among the Nage 109

It furthermore appears that even before the colonial period people

accused as witches were not always killed. Apart from the fact that a
certain number of suspects would have successfully fled their accusers,
the banishment of witches, effected by a formal rite, was also a possibil-
ity. In addition, Nage statements indicate that, even in precolonial
times, certain people were generally suspected of being witches without
any action ever being taken against them. Thus informants stated that
inverted burials were only performed on witches who died a natural
death, and that many, perhaps all, people who were murdered as
witches were not given any burial at all—except of course when they
were interred alive!
The information I have on confessions of witchcraft is somewhat con-
tradictory. Several times I was told that no one, now or formerly, ever
confessed to being a witch. Yet Nage also mentioned cases where an
accused person did make a confession, apparently under duress, and as
noted just above, there is at present at least one man, a ton mali, who
openly admits to being a witch. Formerly, Nage used ordeals, preceded
by the swearing of an oath {sake), in connection with witchcraft accusa-
tions. The one mentioned most often involved grabbing a whetstone
from a pot of boiling water; if the person was scalded and his skin blis-
tered, then he was a witch. More of a test than an ordeal was the prac-
tice of swearing an oath that one was not a witch before holding a stick
of damar wood (padu goa). Possibly because the plant yields resin for
torches, which of course produce light, witches are said to be scared of
damar, and it is therefore used in rites to remove or ward them off. In
this case, if the suspect is indeed a witch, the plant will cause the spirit
(jm) to flee the body in the form of a mouse or other small animal.
Although in some cases ordeals were requested by accused persons
themselves in order to clear their names, I have no information on how
often they were administered, voluntarily or involuntarily. I suspect,
however, that the procedure with the damar may mostly have been
employed as a voluntary test.
Not surprisingly, Nage regard accusing someone of being a witch as a
supreme insult; it is even worse, as I was once told, than calling some-
one ho'o, that is a "slave" or person of the lower class. (As is discussed
just below, this category is associated with witches in other ways as
well.) If an accusation cannot be substantiated, moreover, the accuser
must compensate the accused by paying a heavy fine in livestock and
other valuables. Alternatively, a person who is falsely accused can lay
claim to a portion of the lands belonging to the accuser. Following
transfer of the land, the accused may slaughter buffalo as a means of
110 GREGORY FORTH

affirming his claim and clearing his name, a rite that in parts of the Keo
region is called pébha luki but, "slaughtering to close the anus," thus
referring to the notion that witches have gaping anuses. At present,
open accusations seem to be rare, if indeed they occur at all; at least, I
have never heard of people being publicly accused in recent memory.
Public and formally executed trials and punishments are of course no
longer legal. Yet it is incontrovertible that the majority of Nage people
still accept the existence of witches, and that they regularly voice suspi-
cions, or private accusations, concerning specific individuals.13
An important final point regarding witchcraft accusations among
Nage is that, so far as I can make out, they were usually, perhaps
always, made in respect of some specific attack, and more particularly in
regard to a death. In other words, it seems not to have been usual for
people to have been openly accused, let alone punished, for simply
being a witch (cf. Mair 1969:27). Of course, it is not always easy to dis-
tinguish between a voiced suspicion and a serious accusation, and
indeed it is still customary among Nage to call someone a witch as a
hyperbolic expression of anger or displeasure, without attributing to
him any particular misdeed. 14 Nevertheless, the main point is clearly
attested in an account of an accusation made some sixty years ago
against a Nage nobleman, which is said to have been motivated by
political rivalry. In this case, the accuser is described as having had to
wait until a death occurred, in particular the accidental demise of the
son of a clan-mate of the accused, before making his accusation public.
A parallel attribution finds expression in the idea, mentioned earlier,
that witches must have a specific reason for attacking a victim and can-
not do so simply on the basis of a general feeling of ill will.

The Derivation of Witches and the

Sociology of Nage Witchcraft
The foregoing naturally calls up the question of who is likely to be
accused or suspected of witchcraft among the Nage. Before addressing
this matter, however, we need to consider how it is possible for anyone
to be, or become, a witch in the first place. Nage generally state that no
one who is not a witch intentionally becomes one. Even so, being a
witch is very much more like an achieved than an ascribed status, for
although Nage say that witchcraft can be passed from parent to child
and therefore might remain in a family for generations, they mostly
represent it as something transferred by contagion, or through nurture,
rather than a property that is inherited as a natural condition of certain
Aspects of the Witch among the Nage 111

people. Indeed, there is little to suggest that Nage view witchcraft as

anything to do with "descent" or "consanguinity" as these concepts
are usually employed in anthropology. In addition, while the Nage
affiliate with either the father's or the mother's group, with a usual
preference for patri- as opposed to matrifiliation, in quite a large num-
ber of instances, people spoken of as witches were said to have derived
this condition from their mothers. 15
Nage also claim that husbands often contract witchcraft from their
wives and wives from their husbands. This happens when one spouse
places human flesh in the other's food—something which, I would
guess, is more often thought to be done by the wife to the husband—or
when the spirit (ipa) of the witch enters the body of the spouse. When
this occurs, the spouse who is attacked will become ill. If he later recov-
ers, this means that he too has become a witch; otherwise, the result is
death. If death results from the witch's wa having entered the spouse's
body, then it will flee, returning to its original owner. But if the spouse
gets well, he retains the spirit as his own. (What happens to the original
witch, who is thus apparently left: without a witch spirit, is not made
clear in the Nage representation.)
Nage further claim that a man who marries a female witch will find
her cooking so delicious that he will not be able to leave her, even if he
should discover her true nature. What tastes delicious is, more specifi-
cally, human flesh. Indeed, it seems to be a general idea among Nage
that human flesh is so tasty that a person can easily become addicted to
it, as in the well-known story of a nobleman who, after eating human
flesh belonging to his witch retainers, is supposed to have become a
witch himself in order to obtain more of it (Forth 1989a:91). Children
can become witches in the same way as can spouses, namely, by eating
contaminated food provided by a parent or being invaded by the witch
parent's wa. In fact, Nage say that anyone may become a witch by these
means, and especially by consuming food provided by a witch, food
that despite all outward appearances is likely to be human flesh.
Two alternative ways of becoming a witch have already been noted:
it can result from a failed spirit quest or from engaging in prohibited
behaviors with animals. I have also heard that other sorts of odd behav-
ior, such as running naked outside a house, can turn a person into a
witch. The important point about all this is that most, and perhaps all,
ways of becoming a witch involve something done to or by an individ-
ual. In this respect, witchcraft is not necessarily a matter of group mem-
bership, even when it is derived from a parent; rather, it is something
that is individually acquired. For this reason, it is quite possible for
112 GREGORY FORTH

Nage to suspect someone of being a witch without suspecting his child,

spouse, or sibling. This is clearly shown in the case of P.D., the son of a
man, now deceased, who is reputed to have been a "major witch" (polo
meze). P.D. himself was said most definitely not to be a witch, since at
the time his father was a witch, P.D. was living apart from him, with his
mother. The father was then living with his second wife, who was
reputedly the source of his condition. There can be no plainer illustra-
tion than this of how association, including especially common resi-
dence and commensality, rather than blood or "descent," accounts for
the transfer of witchcraft among Nage.
Also consistent with this circumstance is the idea that, just as witches
are very often made (rather than born), so they can be reformed. One
way of achieving this is to catch the witch's wa as it attempts to reenter
the sleeping witch's body in the form of a small animal such as a mouse.
One should then burn the mouse, thus killing the witch, and then
smear the charred remains between the witch's eyebrows, in the center
of the chest, on each of the ears, and on the fontanelle. One then blows
into the ears and on the fontanelle, thus causing the deceased to revive,
whereupon he will no longer be a witch. Some toa tnali, also, are reput-
edly able to remove a witch's wa from his belly with the hand, thereby
reforming him. 1 6 Both the notion that Nage witchcraft is transferred by
contagion and the idea that a witch need not always remain a witch
indicate that it would be misleading at best to describe witchcraft in this
society as an innate or inherent property of the person, as per various
textbook definitions (e.g., Marwick 1970:12-13).
The foregoing indicates, then, that Nage tend to identify witchcraft
with individuals who enter into particular relationships and engage in
certain kinds of activities, rather than with classes of people otherwise
defined. One partial exception to this is the ho'o, the lower class of
slaves and hereditary retainers, which mostly derives from people cap-
tured in wars. 17 By no means all slaves (as I shall hereafter call them) are
thought to practice witchcraft, but they are far more closely identified
with witches than are persons of the higher social stratum, the mm
laki, or "nobles." 1 8 Thus Nage say there are more witches among the
slaves than among the higher class; and I have similarly heard that,
while both classes include witches, witchcraft is endemic or hereditary
—in the sense of continuously passed on from generation to generation
—only among slaves. High-ranking informants further claimed that
noble persons are in essence not witches, and should not be, and that
their witchcraft derives from the slave class by way of "incorrect" mar-
riages, especially between noble men and slave women. People of noble
Aspects ofthe Witch among the Nage 113

rank further argue that because in the past nobles only ever married
nobles (a somewhat doubtful claim), witchcraft within the higher class
is a relatively recent phenomenon.
While this may be a rather extreme view of the matter, it nevertheless
provides a particularly clear expression, not only of the association of
witches with the slave class, but also of the way in which Nage link the
transfer of witchcraft with marriage. Indeed, it is only because the
power of the witch is represented as something that can be obtained
through particular forms of contact that Nage are able to link it espe-
cially with people of lower rank and yet consider that anyone might be
a witch. At the same time, their theory allows for someone to be a
witch without his close kin necessarily being the same. The close associ-
ation with the slave class and the possibility of marital transfer of witch-
craft also provides an obvious way of rationalizing the Nage, and espe-
cially the higher-class, preference for rank endogamy. Consistent with
this, some evidence suggests that there may be a particular association
of beautiful women of the lower class with witches, women who would
likely lead male noblemen astray in matters of sex and marriage.
There are several reasons why the Nage should identify people of the
lower class as witches. To begin with, in traditional society nobles could
normally be accused only by other nobles, since slaves lacked the politi-
cal means of making effective accusations against members of the higher
class. Especially in the context of eastern Indonesian culture, with its
marked symbolic dualism, it can further be argued that the slaves' lack
of worldly power tends to imply its opposite—namely, a socially uncon-
trolled mystical power (cf. Douglas 1966:123; also Leach 1961:1-27).
Thus, insofar as slaves are perceived to exercise any power at all, includ-
ing power over their social superiors, this has to be of an unseen, spiri-
tual kind. Add to this the undeniable facts that, in traditional society,
nobles were in various ways dependent on slaves, and the probable cir-
cumstance that slaves sometimes resented their subordinate status and
were known to do so, the reason why nobles would regularly suspect
and accuse members of the lower class of witchcraft becomes quite clear
(cf. Douglas 1966:125, referring to the East African Mandari).
In this connection we should further recall that a principal method
of witch attack is catching a victim's soul. Through witchcraft, there-
fore, slaves are able to exert power over others by means of a spiritual
capture. In contrast, the ultimate source of the nobles' power over
slaves, in fact the very origin of the slave class in the Nage view, is physi-
cal capture. Thus, witches, many of whom are slaves, do to souls what
people of the higher class, in order indeed to become a higher class, do
114 GREGORY FORTH

(or did) to bodies. In this regard it may be worth noting that the word
Nage use in reference to witches capturing souls, kaka ("to capture,
kidnap"), is the same as that employed for the capture of a slave.
Another reason why slaves and witches should be identified is that
people of the lower class, deriving from war captives, are considered
to be ultimately outsiders—even non-Nage, as I have heard them
described.19 In relation to the higher class of Nage, therefore, the posi-
tion of slaves is analogous to that of free spirits, which, having their
abodes in places outside of human habitations, are also outsiders. As
noted, these spirits are also a source, perhaps the ultimate source, of
witchcraft powers. Since witchcraft comes from outside the commu-
nity, it is thus not surprising that it should be associated with slaves,
who also have an external origin. For a person of higher rank to marry a
slave, and for someone to enter into a relationship with a free spirit in
order to obtain special powers (and thereby subordinate himself to the
spirit), are therefore the same sort of thing; and both incur the danger
of being turned into a witch. But while slaves are ultimately outsiders
and remain socially marginal, they are unequivocally inside the com-
munity. They are, in other words, the outside brought inside, and as
such are ambiguous social beings. Nothing could be more in accord
with the image of the witch than this.
Following one opinion, witch slaves cannot harm noblemen; only
witches who are themselves nobles or, as this was also expressed, only
the witch relatives of nobles, can do so. This notion is manifestly con-
tradicted by various reported cases. Nevertheless, it does ring true in
relation to the fact that, in several well-known cases of witchcraft accu-
sations in the Bo'a Wae region, the accused and the victim were closely
related persons of the higher class. Also relevant here is the Nage belief
that, after becoming a witch, a person will invariably test his powers on
a close relative, who may be a child, spouse, sibling, or parent (cf. Mair
1969:39). Apparently related to this is the further idea that "new
witches" (polo muzi), people who have recently acquired witchcraft, are
far more dangerous than "old witches" (polo olo), those whose powers
have been passed on from generation to generation. (In fact, one man
stated that "old witches" do not engage in witchcraft at all, or that
they might do so but are too clever ever to be detected. Others simply
described "old witches" as not very bold.)
Although I can provide no statistical support, my impression is
indeed that, among the higher class at least, accusations or suspicions of
witchcraft tend to be directed against people closely related to the vic-
tim, that is, members of the same household, lineage, or local clan,
Aspects ofthe Witch among the Nage 115

rather than against nonrelatives and nonresident affines. There is also

the suggestion, which quantitative research might confirm, that,
among male agnates, half-siblings and adopted siblings (of the victim or
the accuser) are particularly open to suspicion. With regard to the asso-
ciation of slaves with witches, it might therefore look as though higher-
class Nage, somewhat paradoxically, suspect both the most closely
related and the most distantly related people of witchcraft. However,
this circumstance appears rather less curious when one considers that in
all three of the cases where noble deaths were attributed to lower-class
witches, and for which I have reasonably detailed information, it was
either the master or a member of his family (in two instances his chil-
dren) who was attacked. In other words, where individual slaves are
accused or suspected of harming higher-ranking people, it seems that
the relationship between witch and victim is also close, though the
closeness in this case is social rather than genealogical.
At the same time, there can be little question that accusations and
suspicions directed against close relatives are often differently motivated
from those leveled by nobles against slaves. For one thing, as is appar-
ent from the details of two of the best-known public accusations made
in Bo'a Wae, brothers and members of the same local lineage or clan are
likely to be accused in the context of factional disputes and competition
over rights to land and rivalry over positions of leadership within
groups. Thus, in one of the two cases just mentioned, which occurred
perhaps in the 1890s, the Nage leader 'Oga Ngole is said to have
accused and executed a half-brother for the alleged murder of their
father. In the most complete account I have of this (provided, it should
be noted, by members of a faction at present opposed to the descen-
dants of the Nage leader), the accusation was made precisely in order to
remove the half-brother, reputedly his father's chosen heir, so that the
accuser could realize his ambition of becoming the most powerful man
in the Nage region. After the accused was put to death, moreover, his
younger brother moved to another village and there in effect estab-
lished a separate lineage, in a way reminiscent of the pattern described
for some African societies (see, e.g., Middleton 1960, Turner 1957).
In the second case, some three decades later, the Nage leader, by this
time the Dutch-appointed rajah of Nage, accused a classificatory
brother of using witchcraft to kill the son of another of his classificatory
brothers. 20 In this instance, too, informants interpreted the motive of
the accuser as a desire to remove a potential rival and thereby increase
his own power. The Nage leader's aim, I was further informed, was to
cause the accused to flee to another village and, in so doing, give up all
116 GREGORY FORTH

or part of his lands, which the accuser could then seize. In fact, he
refused to leave and died, apparently from natural causes, just a year or
so later.21
The fact that in this case the accuser attempted to banish the accused
rather than put him to death is evidently connected with the fact that
the accusation was made during the colonial period. At the same time,
some evidence suggests that capital punishment would have been more
usual when the accused witch was a slave.22 It is possible, therefore,
that in a traditional setting witchcraft accusations involving persons
of the same rank—that is, mostly closely related nobles—and those
directed against people of the lower class differed in the frequency with
which the different sorts of punishment were imposed.
But this is not so clear as the apparent difference in regard to motive
as between accusations made against slaves and those directed at higher-
class relatives. Accusations against slaves could not, in the nature of
things, have been motivated by factional rivalry or competition over
leadership or resources. While not meaning to suggest that accusations
or suspicions of witchcraft directed against rivals are always disingenu-
ous, and while recognizing that accusing subordinates can be politically
motivated in other ways, in the total context of Nage cosmology and
symbolism, attributing witchcraft to members of the lower class pro-
vides a somewhat more satisfactory way of accounting for misfortune,
just as acting against slave witches, especially by killing them, would
provide a more coherent—and in the past a readily available—means of
dealing with it. As noted, among the nobility at least, the lower class is
in one sense regarded as the source of witchcraft among the Nage. By
accusing and killing slave witches, therefore, one goes, as it were, to the
root of the matter, which is not the case where relatives of high rank are
concerned.

Concluding Remarks
It is abundantly clear that social factors cannot explain the exis-
tence of the idea of the witch (see Needham 1978). Not only do the
same beliefs and practices relating to witchcraft occur in the most
diverse social settings, but accusations and suspicions, although rarely
random, are accompaniments of quite different sorts of relationships in
different societies. Where the witch is found, moreover, not always are
specific individuals identified or accused.23 Who is a witch may be left
undefined, or witchcraft may be identified only with groups or catego-
ries of people. Even where individuals are identified as witches, it also
Aspects of the Witch among the Nage 117

does not follow that they will be physically punished. People may be
satisfied with magical counterattack, or they may take only defensive
measures, or they may do very little, or nothing at all.
All the same, where one encounters the idea of the witch—or, more
specifically, the belief that some humans can arm other humans in
unseen ways—it would be surprising indeed if social factors did not
have some bearing upon the ways the idea is expressed and is mani-
fested in patterns of social action. As Douglas has argued (1970:xxvi),
witchcraft everywhere seems to concern social and conceptual bounda-
ries that are violated by external forces. Among the Nage, these forces
have two major social manifestations: (1) large numbers of slaves who,
being essentially non-Nage but permanently resident and incorporated
into the community, are "internal outsiders"; and (2) other persons
who have, as it were, become infected by this external power, either
through contact, and especially marriage, with slaves or somewhat
more directly with maleficent spirits. But while the ultimate source of
witchcraft is thus outside of society, witches—always, as Nage stress,
human beings rather than spirits—are permanently inside. Consistent
with this is the Nage attribution of invisible attack that is thought to
emanate directly from the outside to spirits rather than to other human
communities acting as witches. Human enemies (i.e., other communi-
ties) attack physically not spiritually, while witches, as insiders, attack
spiritually and never physically.24 On the other hand, as Nage state-
ments make quite clear, external free spirits are not normally able to
enter such interior places as houses and villages. When a person suffers
illness or dies from encounters he is thought to have had with spirits,
Nage represent these as having taken place outside of human habita-
tions. Witches, in contrast, can attack a person in his own home,
though they can do so outside as well, as, for example, when a witch
captures the wandering soul of a sleeping victim.
The idea that witches characteristically eat human flesh also makes
particular sense in terms of the Nage identification of witchcraft with a
quite narrowly defined interior of the community. To be sure, canni-
balism is a widely encountered attribute of witches, but its prominence
in the Nage representation is arguably connected with the idea of the
witch as an insider operating on and attacking the inside, consuming
something to which he himself belongs.
The depiction of the witch as a cannibal is especially apposite to the
identification of close relatives as witches. On the other hand, the par-
ticular way in which Nage cosmology and social theory articulate the
contrast of inside and outside illuminates the association of witchcraft
118 GREGORY FORTH

with slaves, who as noted earlier occupy an ambiguous position in the

traditional social order of Nage. To understand why accusations and
suspicions are often directed against close relatives as well, one has to
look more closely at the internal organization of Nage society. Of spe-
cial importance in this regard is the nature of Nage corporate groups-
local segments of named clans (as these may provisionally be called)—
which are mostly significant in respect of land tenure, marriage
payments, and ritual. While generally depicted by Nage themselves as
patrilineages, these groups are somewhat lacking in clear-cut rules of
inheritance and succession; formal and informal positions of leadership
within the group depend as much on personal qualities and wealth as
they do on parentage or descent; and in consequence individual mem-
bers are frequently in competition over power and resources. Owing in
part to particular forms of adoption and flexible rules of incorporation,
even affiliation to these groups is not always a straightforward matter,
so that a person's membership in a particular group is not infrequently
contested, while some people will attempt to claim membership in two
or more groups. As may be glimpsed from this brief sketch, in this situ-
ation a man's competitors will most often be found among his closest
relatives, including his siblings, half-siblings, adopted siblings, cousins,
and close kinsmen in adjacent generations.
Accusing spouses, in contrast, relates to the derivation of witchcraft
from the outside and hence its association with both slaves and external
spirits. Of particular interest in the Nage case is the circumstance that
affines in general seem not commonly to be suspected, something that
is only partly explained by the usual absence of political rivalry between
affinally related men. Instead, marital transfer of witchcraft is seen as a
means by which it is introduced from the outside by specific individuals
so that it affects only their spouses and offspring. Accordingly, Nage
frequendy support the argument that a particular man is a witch by ref-
erence to the influence of his wife. It is, of course, the idea that witch-
craft is transferred by various forms of contagion that allows individuals
to be accused without implicating whole groups, or even their closest
kin. Indeed, the latter may also be the accuser's closest kin. A man can
therefore accuse a sibling; he can also accuse a person while still sup-
porting a close kinsman of the accused.
There is a lot more about Nage witchcraft to explore than I have cov-
ered here. Not only have I been unable in this brief survey to touch on
all matters for which I have data, but there is much more that could be
done in the field, especially in regard to specific cases and the recent his-
tory of accusations and their consequences. What I hope to have
Aspects of the Witch among the Nage 119

accomplished, however, is a demonstration of some of the ways in

which Nage ideas about witches and witchcraft fit with certain aspects
of their society. I have also endeavored to show how the figure of the
witch among the Nage can be understood only in relation to ideas
about the human soul and various kinds of free spirits. While I there-
fore agree with Crick that it is necessary to locate the witch within a
"moral space" and within a system of "person categories" (1976:115),
I would urge that these categories should not be limited to other
socially defined human types (such as the ton malt, or witch-finders) but
should also include what we—sometimes arbitrarily perhaps—distin-
guish as "spirits." For though the Nage witch is surely a human being,
he is, of necessity, only partly so.

Notes and References

1. Fieldwork in Flores, which to date has totaled over eleven months,
has been sponsored by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), the National
Institute for Cultural Research (LRKN), and Nusa Cendana University. At dif-
ferent times, funding has been provided by the British Academy, the Central
Research Fund of the University of Alberta, and the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada. My visit to the University of Kent,
where this paper was delivered in September 1989, was funded from a travel
grant awarded by the Central Research Fund of the University of Alberta. I am
most grateful to all of these bodies for their support.
2. Contrary to what Penard (1929:466) claims for Flores in general, Nage
seem not to regard witches as being mostly women. To avoid the inconve-
nience of having to repeat the words "he or she," throughout I employ only
the masculine singular pronoun to refer to the witch and his victim.
3. Nage thus use polo and atapolo ("polo person") synonymously when refer-
ring to witches. As Arndt (1956:438) has pointed out, polo, a term that also
occurs in the Ngadha and Endenese languages of Flores, is cognate with Bahasa
Indonesia and Malay "polong," "ghost, evil spirit" (Echols and Shadily
1963:282).
4. Cannibalism is also mentioned in accounts I recorded of two famous
accusations made in the Bo'a Wae region. In both cases, the accused is
described as denying that he ever ate human flesh, as a way of pleading his
innocence. In these accounts it is also argued several times, as a form of
defense, that if the accused were a witch, then certain of his relatives must also
be witches, because, as it is put in one account, "they have eaten from the
same plate." Although this inference does not necessarily follow in the light of
certain Nage beliefs (such as the belief that an individual can become a witch
through contact with spirits), the import of this kind of argument will become
clearer as we proceed.
5. This method of attack is evidently an exception to the principle, often
invoked in definitions of witchcraft, that witches attack by purely psychic
120 GREGORY FORTH

means (see Douglas 1970:xxxvi, n. 1). Since placing something in someone's

food is a physical act, such a practice appears, moreover, to resemble sorcery
more than witchcraft, according to the distinction as formulated by Evans-Prit-
chard for the Azande. On the whole, though, acts attributed to witches
among Nage do not conform to the model of sorcery, understood as a type of
practice involving magical acts intended to cause harm and often conducted on
behalf of a client. Operating only in his own interests, the Nage witch cannot
be called a practitioner of any sort.
6. The wa of a witch, sometimes called mae wa, takes the place of the mae
(soul) in a normal person. Bader (1968:9) makes much the same point when he
states that the "evil spirit" of a witch is identical with his soul.
7. It is therefore not without justification that Penard (1929) entitles his
article "Seelenfangende Hexen auf Flores."
8. Bad death is attributed to witches in eastern Sumba, though more partic-
ularly to a witch's curse (Forth 1981:114).
9. Signs that a person is, or might be, a witch include restless eyes and a
body odor like a male goat. Bader (1968:11-12) records a fairly long list of
physical indices of witches, presumably from other parts of Flores.
10. As a couple of informants suggested, it is no doubt true that toa malt
play an important part in formulating, promoting, and maintaining ideas
about witches and the possibilities of witchcraft.
11. Writing mostly on central and eastern Flores, Bader (1968:20-24) indi-
cates that accusations and killings were regular occurrences in other parts of
Flores as well, even during the colonial and national periods. He mentions no
fewer than four secret killings from the Nage region (ibid.:21, 23), one occur-
ring as recently as 1963.
12. A man from Wolo Wea, in the eastern part of the Nage area, told me
that a witch's head should be cut off, otherwise he will come back to life. Peo-
ple I asked in Bo'a Wae thought this was not the practice there. On the other
hand, Bader (1968:23) says the body of a witch is usually cut up, in order to
prevent the return of his spirit and hence his revival. Live burial may possibly
be aimed at keeping the spirit inside the body as well, though I have never
heard this stated by Nage.
13. Only two Nage ever expressed skepticism about the existence of
witches. However, this did not prevent one of them from frequently speaking
of certain people as witches. Furthermore, both based their skepticism on the
fact that they personally had never had an experience to suggest that witches
existed, rather than on an argument of principle.
14. A common insult is the phrase kau ho'opolo, "you [are a] witch [and a]
slave." Polo ("witch") is used metaphorically to refer to thieves, adulterers, and
other troublemakers who, as Nage remark, are not really witches. As I was fur-
ther told,polo can be used to describe any behavior that is bad.
15. The ways in which the concept of descent is usefully applied to the tra-
ditional social order of Nage have yet to be fully worked out. Although they
show a marked preference for affiliation to the father's group, in several
respects their clans (woe) are more accurately characterized as ambilineal than
patrilineal.
16. This seems to apply more specifically to people who are in the process of
Aspects ofthe Witch among the Nage 121

becoming witches after the wa of an established witch has invaded their bodies.
Such people, however, appear not always, or entirely, to be considered inno-
cent victims. Thus, in one case described to me, a ton malt, after removing the
wa in the form of a small animal, was said to have admonished the patient
never to let the thing enter his body again.
17. Since slavery has long been abolished in Indonesia, the ho'o class are
more properly described as the descendants of slaves.
18. Formally speaking, there are just two ranks in Nage society.
19. Nage in Bo'a Wae say that war captives were never other Nage but
always members of other ethnic groups. The claim appears to be more or less
probable depending on which of several definitions of "Nage" is adopted. By
all accounts, among the populations of central Flores the inhabitants of the
Bo'a Wae region were particularly successful in local wars during the nine-
teenth century. Some of the evidendy large numbers of captives taken in these
wars were kept, while others were sold, some for foreign export. Nage also for-
merly knew debt slavery, but slaves of this sort—whose slave status was, in the-
ory at least, not permanent—seem to have been in a minority.
20. The precise genealogical relationship between accuser and accused in
this case is itself a matter of dispute. According to one source, they were full
brothers, but this claim is very probably not correct.
21. Other cases reported to me, from the Keo region, appear to have been
similarly motivated by efforts to wrest land from close male relatives.
22. In Bo'a Wae, I recorded details of three cases where slaves were accused;
two of these were during the colonial period, and in both cases the accused was
killed. I seem not to have heard of slave witches, or surviving members of their
families, or indeed other accused persons or their survivors, being sold to out-
siders, as was apparently done elsewhere in Flores (see Penard 1929:466; Bader
1968:21).
23. The Burmese, for example, do not openly accuse individuals of witch-
craft for fear of retaliation by the witch (Spiro 1967:31). Nor, apparendy for
the same reason, do the Balinese (Howe 1984:212).
24. The point is made explicit in a story concerning a man who becomes a
witch after acquiring a taste of human flesh. In order to satisfy his craving, he
first spears a child, but is immediately warned by an established witch that this
is not the way a witch should kill. The child is then brought back to life and
again attacked by the novice, this time employing the means usual for a witch.

Arndt, P. 1956. Krankheit und Krankheitsursachen bei den Ngadha (Mittel-

Flores). Anthropos 51:417-446.
Bader, H. 1968. Hexenglaube auf Flores (Indonesien). In Anthropka (Studia
Instituti Anthropos 21). St. Augustin, Germany: Anthropos-Institut.
Crick, M. 1976. Explorations in language and meaning: Towards a semantic anthro-
pology. London: Malaby Press.
Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and danger: An analysis ofconcepts of pollution and taboo.
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
. 1970. Introduction: Thirty years after Witchcraft, oracles and magic. In
M. Douglas, ed., Witchcraft confessions and accusations, ed. M. Douglas.
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ASA Monograph in Social Anthropology 9. London: Tavistock Publica-

tions.
Echols, J. M., and H. Shadily. 1963. An Indonesian-English dictionary. 2d ed.
Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Forth, G. L. 1981. Bindi: An ethnographic study ofa traditional domain in eastern
Sumba. Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en
Volkenkunde 93. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
. 1989a. Animals, witches and wind: Eastern Indonesian variations on
the "thunder complex." Anthropos 84:89-106.
. 1989b. The Pa Sese festival of the Nage of Bo'a Wae (central Flores).
Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Landmen Volkenkunde 145(4): 502-519.
. 1991. Shamanic powers and mystical practitioners among the Nage of
central Flores (eastern Indonesia). Canberra Anthropology 14(2): 1-29.
Howe, L. E. A. 1984. Gods, people, spirits and witches: The Balinese system
of person definition. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 140(2-3):
193-222.
Leach, E. R. 1961. Bethinking anthropology. London School of Economics
Monographs on Social Anthropology 22. London: Athlone Press.
Mair, L. 1969. Witchcraft. New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill.
Marwick, M. 1970. Introduction to M. Marwick, ed., Witchcraft and sorcery:
Selected readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Middleton, J. F. M. 1960. Lugbam religion. London: Oxford University Press.
Needham, R. 1978. Primordial characters. Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia.
Penard, W. A. 1929. Seelenfangende Hexen auf Flores. Der Erdball 3:466-
469.
Spiro, M. E. 1967. Burmese supematuralism. Expanded edition. Philadelphia:
Institute for the Study of Human Issues.
Turner, V. W. 1957. Schism and continuity in an African society: A study of
Ndembu village life. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Verheijen, J. A. J. 1951. HetHoogste Wezen bij de Manggaraiers. Studia Instituti
Anthropos 4. Vienna-Mödling: St. Gabriel.
 7
Observations on the Practice
of Sorcery in Java
RONNY NITIBASKARA

THIS CHAPTER is intended as a simple exercise in the ethnography

of popular belief and practice in Java, and the evidence it contains is
drawn from personal observation and a systematic reading of the Indo-
nesian daily press. An attempt is made, first, to look at some of the
indigenous terms used in Java to designate various specialist traditional
practitioners, among whom are those who are labeled magicians and
sorcerers. It will, however, be argued that although some of the terms
refer to very clearly defined specialisms, it is not possible, at least in the
indigenous terminology, to distinguish between benign and malicious
practitioners. And to that extent, as confirmed by Slaats and Portier in
their contribution to this volume, distinctions between black and
white magic in the Indonesian context are simply not useful.
Moving from the question of specialist terms, the paper examines
briefly a number of legal cases in which allegations of witchcraft were
made and suggests that there exist very noticeable differences between
the perceptions of the population at large concerning the "reality" of
witchcraft and current legal procedures which, in their jurisprudential
premises, deny the existence of witchcraft. Finally, irrespective of the
way in which the law thinks or acts, it remains important to investigate
the sociological context in which witchcraft accusations emerge, and
the chapter concludes with reference to several cases recently men-
tioned in the press that are, in my observation, representative and typi-
cal. On the basis of these cases, some brief remarks are made about fea-
tures of social context commonly found in circumstances in Java where
witchcraft accusations are made.

123
124 Ronny Nitibaskara

Before turning specifically to a discussion of the practice of sorcery, it

is worth recalling the complexity of traditional Javanese beliefs, so that
we can set the specific case studies under discussion in an appropriate
context. The general term used to describe Javanese traditions, made
familiar above all by Clifford Geertz in his book The Befyion of Java, is
syncretism (Geertz 1964:5). By this is meant the fusion of numerous tra-
ditions of different origins in a new, complex whole—not simply a mix-
ture of beliefs, but a compound, drawing upon numerous mythical and
religious sources. In the case of Java, one can see chronologically the
acceptance of a Hindu cosmology of beliefs and traditions, and its
assimilation to an indigenous Javanese set of religious ideas with its
emphasis on the role of ancestor-spirits and the power of forces of
nature. This gave rise to what has sometimes been called the Hindu-
Javanese tradition, which in turn absorbed and was modified by Islamic
traditions that arrived in Java in the late thirteenth century and since
then have gradually percolated down into the religious imagination of
the people of Java.
Since Geertz's famous formulation there has been some controversy
about the nature of Javanese syncretism. In particular, there has been
some skepticism about the divisions between social groups and their
allegiance to specific syncretic traditions proposed by Geertz (Bachtiar
1985:278-285). More recently, however, there has been some discus-
sion about whether that core of Javanese belief which Geertz identified
as being essentially Hindu in origin may not in fact have derived from
Islamic mysticism rather than Hinduism (Woodward 1989:245-251).
The debates, however, have been largely about origins. What concerns
us here is the variety of the practices in Java and what ideas and beliefs
are held to justify practice.
Sorcerers are certainly thought to exist in Java (Koentjaraningrat
1985:410-426; Geertz 1964:106-111). This is evident not only from
the number of films and media stories that circulate about ilmu hitam
(the black art) and gurutrgma (evil-working magical substances) but,
more significandy perhaps, from the number of reported cases of
attacks on individuals who are alleged to be sorcerers and to have car-
ried out witchcraft attacks against victims. Furthermore, there are
recorded confessions of sorcerers who allege that they have successfully
perpetrated acts of malign magic. (It must, however, be acknowledged
that these confessions are not easily obtainable and are seldom encoun-
tered. They are occasionally to be found in police records. I have in my
possession the diary and jottings of a "reformed" sorcerer who alleged
he had brought about the death of tens of victims.)
Observations on Sorcery in Java 125

Despite this clear evidence of a belief in sorcery, however, there is no

established body of case material we can rely upon to document and
analyze these beliefs. One reason for this is the absence of sorcery as a
recognized crime in the criminal code. (See the contribution of Slaats
and Portier in this volume on this specific issue.) Thus, although sor-
cerers are frequently brought to trial, and at their trial are labeled "false
practitioners" (dukun palsu) or "immoral practitioners" (dukun cabut),
their crimes are recorded as fraud or deception, rape, robbery, and mur-
der. The beliefs concerning witchcraft and sorcery, and the status of
such beliefs within the moral universe of a society, although very much
the subtext of trial proceedings, are simply incidental to the legal pro-
ceedings.
Two further difficulties one encounters in trying to understand
occult phenomena arise from indigenous perceptions of such practice
and the way in which researchers have chosen to frame their investiga-
tions within a perspective that in effect simply accepts indigenous cate-
gories. This requires some explanation.
In Java the generic term for an indigenous healer is dukun, and the
term is used as a general label to describe anyone with specialist powers
and knowledge whose actions and advice can affect the physical well-
being of individuals in the community. Within this general designation
there are practitioners who are recognized as specialists and are labeled
according to whether they treat certain specific conditions or perform
according to the sources of their specialist power: possession by spirits,
ownership of magical items, innate skill, and so on. Here, for example,
is a partial list of specialist dukun.
1. Dukun wiwit (an expert in making land fertile)
2. Dukun siwer (an expert in preventing bad luck)
3. Dukunprewangan (a spirit medium)
4. Dukunpaes (an expert in bridal decoration)
5. Dukun calak (a circumcision specialist)
6. Dukun susuk (an expert in inserting slivers of precious metal or
diamonds under the skin, a treatment believed to bestow power on the
client)
7. Dukun bayi (an expert at midwifery)
8. Dukun jampi (an expert in the preparation of traditional medi-
cines)
In addition to the above there are those dukun who have a highly
regarded spiritual power and are often referred to, or refer to them-
selves, by tides usually associated with religious ritual: akhli kebatinan,
kyai, mualim.
126 Ronny Nitibaskara

Finally, there is that category of dukun who are associated with

malign magic. One term for them is dukun sihir, sihir being malign
magic. In West Java the terms dukun teluh and tukangganggaortg are
used. This latter group of sorcerers is thought to reside principally in
the hinterland south of Banten and Sukabumi. A defining characteristic
of these "sorcerer" dukun is that they are said to employ the services of
evil spirits, whom they often tend as spirit-familiars.
In principle, then, it is possible to distinguish between good and evil
dukun, and there is a variety of practices which provide the sociological
context to understanding the differences between them. To acquire
their power, malevolent dukun, according to popular imagination,
engage in a variety of disgusting and repugnant rituals that depend on
the possession of both recherché items and substances—corpses, skulls,
bodily excretions, rare animal extracts—and frequently they employ the
exuviae of victims in concocting their magic.
However, although this difference in defining characteristics should
enable the observer on a diagnostic basis to distinguish between good
and bad dukun, in practice there is confusion (cf. Slaats and Portier).
First of all, dukun sihir or dukun teluh will rarely advertise themselves as
such, and hence they are not a self-defining category. They will be
happy to speak of themselves genetically as dukun with special healing
powers, some perhaps suggesting or implying that they have the poten-
tial to use those powers for malevolent purposes. More often than not,
however, it is the community that will ascribe to them this power to
perform malign magic. Thus, within any small community some will
regard an individual simply as a dukun, making no moral assessment
of the person, while others may well regard the same individual as hav-
ing primarily evil intentions. Sometimes, of course, it may be in the
immediate interest of the dukun to acquire this rather awesome repu-
tation for being an "evil" dukun, a reputation on which he or she can
trade.
However, because of the essential ambiguity surrounding the role
and intentions of the dukun, it is more or less impossible to identify an
individual as exclusively a sorcerer—sorcery will at most be only one of a
range of pursuits engaged in by the dukun. Furthermore, in any discus-
sion of an alleged case of sorcery in Javanese societies it is as much the
clients who employ the sorcerers, as the sorcerers themselves, who are
regarded as the perpetrators of evil. Consequently, researchers in the
field observing the sociological context of beliefs in witchcraft, rather
than focusing upon "sorcery" as a sociological phenomenon to be
investigated, have chosen to examine the role of the dukun in its total-
Observations on Sorcery in Java 127

ity, looking at healing and counseling practices as well as the use of

trance and possession, and investigating pharmacopoeia and techniques
and training. Sorcery tends to become a residual category to be investi-
gated, the more so since the outside observer has very little access to
those very secret practices from which he or she, by the nature of
things, is excluded. At best, then, sorcery can only be inferred, or
described at one remove—hence the constant references to sorcerers liv-
ing in the village beyond the next hill or, in this case, remote areas of
Banten.
It is frequendy the case, too, that even those dukun who are predom-
inantly regarded with favor in a community still suffer from some taint,
often arising from the suspicion of the religiously orthodox concerning
the claims made by the dukun in relation to the sources of their powers:
the possession of spirits, atavistic powers, pursuit of arcane knowledge.
And this suspicion, fueled, as it has been, by frequent newspaper
reporting of t h e activities of unscrupulous dukun (the dukun palsu and
the dukun cabul), has appeared to grow with the community as ortho-
doxy and Western-derived science increase the general level of commu-
nal skepticism. In addition, however, uncertainty arises not just in rela-
tion to the suspicion about the dukun's personal motives or the sources
of their authority and power, but also in relation to the moral ambigu-
ity surrounding some of the services they are asked to provide.
That dukun are able to provide clients with two attributes in particu-
lar, pangasihan and pangabaran, is perhaps the most commonly held
belief about their magical powers in Java. The former is a quality that
makes a person universally attractive to the opposite sex and is acquired
through the possession of a talisman, a jimat; the latter is a quality of
strength and invulnerability, again acquired through possession of an
amulet given by a dukun. Now in themselves these qualities are neutral,
in that, although they enhance the personalities of the people who pos-
sess them, they do not depend directly on a malign influence being
directed against others. The dukun in these instances are, then, not
providing a morally reprehensible service. They are not, therefore,
instandy to be categorized as evil or as sorcerers. However, they are cer-
tainly regarded as having special powers, and within the local commu-
nity they are treated with respect and deference tinged with some
apprehension and fear.
What, then, are the circumstances which can, as it were, tip a soci-
ety's or a community's respect or even skepticism of an individual
dukun's motives into a more general hostility, leading ultimately to a
denunciation or accusation of witchcraft? One circumstance is clearly
128 RONNY NITIBASKARA

when a dukun is seen to be abusing his or her position simply for the
sake of personal gain or sexual gratification. This appears to happen
quite frequently. Two recent instances can illustrate this.

Case 1
The newspaper Pos Kota of 4 November 1989 reported an incident in
Surabaya. Miss MS (forty-one years of age), who was a dukun,
claimed that she was able to heal several types of illness, that she
could bring about preternatural (gaib) phenomena, and that she
could predict winning lottery numbers. On the basis of these claims,
a lot of people believed her and became her patients. According to
the information of one of her victims who reported the matter to the
judicial authorities, MS was willing to treat someone only if the con-
ditions she stipulated were met, saying at the same time that the
agent which caused the patient's illness was not herself but a spirit
(roh halus) that was summoned through the power of kris and offer-
ings. If the spirit who was summoned came, then that spirit would
enter the body of MS. The conditions stipulated by MS were a sum
of money and having sexual congress with a woman (the dukun
engaged in lesbian practices). If the patient was a woman, then it was
the client who was submitted to this; if the client was a man, then
MS asked for his wife. Finally one client admitted, "The money was
quite gone (ludes) possessions gone and . . . one had to do that." On
the basis of this statement, it appears that the actions of MS fell
within the provisions of Article 378 of the Criminal Code, which
states:
Whoever intentionally obtains gain for himself or another in an
illegal way through employing a false name or character, through
trickery (tipu muslihtri) or deceit, prompting another to surrender
something to him or to become indebted or pay off a debt, is lia-
ble on account of the deception to a maximum term of imprison-
ment of four years.

Case 2
Tempo of the 12 November 1988 reported a case in Sumenep in
Madura. Abdul GafFar (twenty-four years of age), a false dukun,
claimed that he could summon an angel so that the client could
become invulnerable (kebal) and wealthy. In addition to taking his
victim's money, Abdul Gaffer also succeeded in having intercourse
Observations on Sorcery in Jam 129

with his victims' wives. He, too, was eventually sentenced for the
offense of fraud and deception.

These two cases, selected from hundreds reported in the Indonesian

press over the course of a year, indicate, in the first place, how strong
the beliefs in occult powers are among the population and how those
beliefs and the credulity of the population at large are played upon by
tricksters. More to our immediate purpose here, however, is how these
cases show the circumstances under which the examples of fraud are
exposed and how the belief in the dukun eventually collapses. In Abdul
Gaffar's case, it was the wife of a victim who had to be rushed to the
hospital after being poisoned by magical water infected by a kris who
eventually brought to light what had happened. Numerous examples
of dukun being exposed as tricksters in ways like this nevertheless do
not totally undermine belief in all dukun. Those who regularly follow
such newspaper reports are simply put on their guard and are made
aware of the need to distinguish the genuine from the false dukun. The
infrastructure of belief remains intact even when individuals themselves
may be discredited.
Confirmation of the continuing credence given to the alleged powers
of dukun is found in the numerous attacks of mobs on those said to be
sorcerers. In these cases one sees that the individual's power is in no
way denied or depreciated—as it was ultimately with the exposure of
the dukun palsu—but, on the contrary, the reality of the power is ac-
knowledged and action is taken by the mob to destroy that power. The
critical point at which the mob acts, then, is when the dukun is identi-
fied with a wholly evil purpose and the perpetration of a specific act or
acts of malign magic, and when there is no longer a question of moral
ambivalence.
As one might have expected, the accusation of evil directed against
an individual is particularly prone to fall on those who are in some ways
marginal to a society or community for what may be a variety of eco-
nomic, social, or cultural circumstances. On the other hand, there are
cases where the accusation managed to topple those who were in
important structural positions within societies. Again, examples can
illustrate this.

Case 3
As reported in Tempo 8 November 1986, Nyonya Nidjem was
stripped and forced to watch as a gang of about forty youths burned
 RONNY NITIBASKASA

down her house. The situation arose because Nidjem's late husband,
Sarodji, was suspected of possessing magical/black powers (ilmu¿¡aib/
hitam) that he used to enrich himself, and it was said that he had
been prone to poison people. It is clear that Sarodji in his lifetime
had a reputation as a feared criminal who frequently stole.

Case 4
Tempo of 26 September 1987 reported that the house of Kaharta (fifty
years old), who was suspected of possessing a Buto Ijo (a spirit who
can be commanded to seek out wealth for its owner), was attacked by
a mob in Sraji in the kabupaten of Pekalongari in central Java. Kaharta
has a reputation as a peanut merchant and had become a wealthy
man in the village. But the inhabitants of the village suspected that
his wealth came from the Buto Ijo. According to those who believed
in the Buto Ijo, its master must provide for a charm for it in the form
of a human soul. On this basis, the villagers who were convinced that
Kaharta possessed a Buto Ijo proceeded to burn down his house and
destroy his possessions. This accusation was strongly denied by
Kaharta. Thus it was the case that, on the basis of the rumor that
Kaharta possessed a Buto Ijo, a criminal act had been committed con-
sisting of the willful destruction by others of goods legally in the pos-
session of the owner.

Case 5
The magazine Fakta, in its July 1 issue of 1989, number 243,
reported the murder of I Ketut Radja in the kabupaten of Klungkung
in Bali. He was alleged to have been a tukang santet, and the murder
was carried out by a mob in a premeditated manner. The incident
arose from the deaths of three members of the family of Ketut Dur
which were said to have been caused by black magic. The three
deaths were said by a dukun to have been committed by I Ketut
Radja, who employed witchcraft (ilmu leak). On the basis of the
dukun's explanation, I Ketut Dur went to visit I Ketut Radja but only
met his wife. On the next day, I Ketut Radja approached I Ketut Dur
and there was a fight. Then I Ketut Radja fell to the ground and was
immediately stamped upon and his hair pulled. At that point I Made
Pasek came on the scene and helped by slipping a noose onto I Ketut
Radja's neck. Then appeared I Ketut Kia, I Wayan Sama, I Made
Jaga, I Wayan Tika, I Ketut Rangka, I Nyoman Katon, Made Alus, I
Nyoman Desa, and I Ketut Gungung to help pull the noose around I
Observations on Sorcery in Java 131

Ketut Radja's neck, which led to his death. At night the body was
thrown into the sea.

Case 6
Tempo of 3 October 1987 reported a case in the village of Pasdirdalem
in the kabupaten of Cianjur in West Java where two villagers had their
heads cut off in a premeditated manner by several villagers. Sukma-
jaya (thirty-five), who acted as the executioner, said that Sarma (sixty-
five) and his son Barma (forty), who were alleged to possess the
knowledge of Pancasona (a spell for perpetual life), had to have their
heads severed from their bodies so that they could not come alive
again. At first it was believed that Sarma and Barma were beaten up
because they frequently criticized the activities of the village head,
Sumirta (thirty-seven). "Perhaps because they had spread it about
that the village head and his staff were corrupt they had to be killed,"
said the head of the police of Cianjur, Letkol Yun Mulyana. Sumirta
denied the statement of the head of police. Nonetheless, Sukumajaya
stated that on that night Sumirta had witnessed the execution from a
distance, and furthermore, that he and his friends had been treated
by the village head in the local coffee shop after they had finished off
Sarma and Barma.

Case 7
Pos Kota of 22 November 1989 reported the premeditated murder in
Cianjur of Aki Patah (seventy), who was suspected of being a tukang
teluh. The four who carried out the murder were members of the vic-
tim's family. One of them was in fact a grandchild of the victim. The
accused did not regret their action. According to Police Chief Drs.
Farouk, there were frequent murders of alleged tukang teluh in the
district of south Cianjur. According to him, many of these allegations
that people were tukang teluh were simply excuses to murder people
who were not liked. In his opinion, in relation to this case he was not
convinced that the murder of Aki Patah was because he was a dukun
teluh. Because the accused were related to the victim, there was a pos-
sibility of family reasons underlying the murder.

Case 8
Tempo of 17 October 1987 reported that Karsosemito (one hundred)
was murdered by his grandchildren, Kim in, Gempol, and Wakino
132 RONNY NITIBASKARA

because they suspected their grandfather of practicing black magic

(menyantet), not only on their neighbors but also on his own descen-
dants. The murder was brought to light by the suspicion of village
officials. In the course of being examined, they related that their
grandfather every year had to make someone ill to feed off them. If
he did not, his health would deteriorate.
Unfortunately, these brief newspaper reports do not contain suffi-
cient information for us to be able to reconstruct satisfactorily the social
circumstances in which accusations of witchcraft and sorcery are likely
to occur and which lead to mob attacks. Clearly, however, this is a sub-
ject where the ample material warrants further research and investiga-
tion. The above cases, limited as they were, already suggest various
hypotheses: extreme old age is likely to cause suspicion (Case 8);
another source of suspicion is unaccountable wealth (Case 4); injury or
illness of a party involved in a quarrel will raise suspicions about the
other party in the quarrel (Case 5); flagrant criminal behavior suggests
alliance with spirits (Case 3). There may also be family reasons underly-
ing accusations (Cases 7 and 8); and local politics may be a factor (Case
6). But although these are all circumstances that may precipitate accusa-
tions of witchcraft, we need more information before we can identify
what additional factors push the accusers into taking action or what fac-
tors facilitate the taking up of those accusations by previously unaf-
fected members of the community. In other words, are there additional
features of marginality that are not reported here? Are there, for exam-
ple, issues of village kinship or ethnicity which isolate families within a
village, or are there political factors, for example, the stigma of belong-
ing to a family associated with the former PKI, which might be crucially
influential in determining the consequences arising from, and indeed
leading to witchcraft accusations?
The research that will help us to answer questions such as these still
needs to be done. The immediate task must be to move away from the
emphasis on dukun as medical practitioner, since this emphasis in fact
clouds the issue. Rather, what we should be doing is looking more
closely at the communities in which witchcraft accusations and confes-
sions occur and trying to determine the sociological context of the
accusations.

References
Bachtiar, Harsja W. 1985 [1973]. "The religion of Java: A commentary." In
Beadings on Islam in Southeast Asia, ed. Ahmad Ibrahim, Sharon Siddique,
Observations on Sorcery in Java 133

and Yasmin Hussain, 278-285. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian

Studies.
Fakta (monthly journal), 1 July 1989.
Geertz, Clifford. 1964 [I960], The religion of Jam. New York: The Free Press.
Koentjaraningrat. 1985. Japanese culture. Singapore: Oxford University Press,
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
Pos Kota (daily newspaper), 4 and 22 November 1989.
Tempo (weekly newspaper): 8 November 1986; 26 September, 3 October, and
17 October 1987; 12 November 1988.
Woodward, Mark R. 1989. Islam in Java. Tucson: The University of Arizona
Press.
 8
Sorcery and the Law
in Modern Indonesia
H E R M A N SLAATS AND KAREN PORTIER

M A G I C , WITCHCRAFT, and sorcery have been extensively dis-

cussed in anthropology. Most of the studies deal with magic as a phe-
nomenon very close to, or interrelated with, religious and cosmological
ideas, beliefs, and behavior. They only implicitly touch on normative
questions, if at all. The studies that do explicitly explore the relation-
ship between magic and the law in a society can be divided into two
general types:
(1) Studies that evaluate occurrences of magic in terms of a particular
system of substantive law. Of these a further distinction should be
made here between: (a) evaluation in terms of centralized (colonial or
independent) state law of Western character; and (b) evaluation in
terms of local customary or traditional law. In both these approaches
the permissiveness of social behavior is tested by reference to more or
less clearly and explicitly formulated preexisting normative rules and
principles.
The first approach yields few results, as the formal legal system of the
state rarely contains hardly any substantive rules with regard to magic.
We shall return to this later. The second, more fruitful approach can be
exemplified by reference to the work of Evans-Pritchard (1931:25),
who put emphasis on the native viewpoint: " . . . the natives clearly
mark off some types of magic as 'criminal,' and they do so according to
moral principles which are vital to the whole theory of magic in this
community. The problem is really to know what the natives under-
stand by such terms as 'crime' and 'justice' in their relation to magic."
(2) Studies that do not refer to any particular dogmatic-normative

135
136 H E R M A N SLATTS AND KAKEN PORTIER

framework, but apply a socioscientific analysis such as Malinowski's

(1940:98-99). He was the first to view sorcery as a legal force uphold-
ing the norms and rules of society (Evans-Pritchard 1931:24).
In this chapter we shall largely ignore the relationship between magic
and traditional law, since our primary concern is the way in which cen-
tralized state law tries to accommodate concepts of magic and sorcery.1
Drawing on examples mainly, but not exclusively, from Indonesia and
New Guinea and comparing the situations in colonial and postcolonial
periods, we shall show that several difficulties have emerged in trying to
deal with magic and sorcery in a modern legal setting. At the core of
these difficulties lies the question of whether to recognize the practice
of magic as a criminal offense, a question that we, like Nitibaskara
(Chap. 7 above), see as becoming increasingly of concern in the context
of contemporary Indonesian judicial practice.

Some Conceptual Preliminaries

The concepts of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft are not as clear as
may be thought at first sight. Much of the literature is characterized by
a variety of theoretical approaches and a lack of terminological and con-
ceptual consistency.2 For the purpose of this contribution we will use
"magic" as a general term including both witchcraft and sorcery.
Magic taken broadly as a concept (Marwick 1987:12) is sometimes
further differentiated: there is white or good magic, which produces
and protects, and there is black or malign magic, which destroys
(Evans-Pritchard 1931:23). It should be realized, however, that
"white" and "black" magic are analytical concepts: in many cultures
the differentiation is unknown or does not have the absolute mean-
ing attributed to it in many Western scientific studies (Geschiere
1989:196).
In Karo Batak society, for example, people do go to practitioners of
magic (whatever designation they may be given in scientific reports:
priests, healers, witchdoctors, sorcerers, etc.). They almost invariably
do so in the conviction that their purpose is a just one: they only
occupy themselves with " g o o d " magic. Malign magic is what other,
dangerous people do. If by the application of good magic it is estab-
lished that their misfortune is due to the use of magic by someone else,
the assault on their health or good luck may be "returned" (cf.
Golomb and Bowen, Chaps. 2 and 10). This is where the activity usu-
ally labeled as "black magic" may come in, and it is only one more step
then to an assault on the health or life of the other in the name of one's
Sorcery and the Law in Indonesia 137

own well-being. Consequently, the dichotomy between black and

white magic does not seem to us a useful approach to understanding
magic (see Beidelman 1970:351-356).
Another notion that needs some clarification is "law." Very often
the concept of law is associated with the body of legislative products
and institutions of the national authorities—i.e., the law that is found
in legal codes and other types of formal legal regulations and court deci-
sions. We shall refer to this as "state law."3 Although the state usually
claims a monopoly on law, sociolegal studies today start from the prin-
ciple of legal plurality (Moore 1983, v. Benda-Beckmann and Strij-
bosch 1986); that is, in every society more than one normative system
is operative simultaneously. Two of the well-known normative systems
in Indonesia, besides state law, are Islamic law (or, more generally, reli-
gious law) and adat law, the autochthonous type of social ordering and
normative regulation (traditional, customary law) that existed long
before a centralized formal juridical regulation was introduced by colo-
nial or national government.
These are important factors in the determination of social behavior.
The members of society draw choices from these different normative
systems for their behavior in social life. There is interaction among the
normative systems: they mutually influence each other. What the
method and degree of interaction are, however, is problematic.
In the public mind the operation of each of these systems tends to be
associated with particular groups in society and particular domains of
social relations and behavior. Thus the Indonesian state law is often
thought to apply particularly to the generally economically based con-
ditions of modern urban life. The application of Islamic law is usually
confined to the adherents of the Muslim religion. Adat law, finally, is
thought to be operative only in small-scale traditional agrarian village
societies and not considered fit to serve the needs of modern social and
economic developments.
Such a theoretical distinction of legal systems does not, however,
adequately reflect the differentiation as it occurs in actual social life. It
would be unrealistic to suppose that in a state like Indonesia, where the
great majority of the population is Muslim, Islamic law (normative
ideas, values, rules, etc.) would have no influence on non-Muslim parts
of the population. On the other hand, it would be just as unrealistic to
suppose that Muslims (and also Christians, etc.) would in no way con-
form to their adat (law). And of course the operation of state law is not
confined to urban societies. It does penetrate, directly and indirectly,
the small village communities, where it affects traditional social life and
138 HERMAN SLATTS AND KAREN PORTIER

economic (agrarian) relationships. In other words, the behavior of peo-

ple cannot be explained or understood in terms of one of these systems
alone. This should be realized when discussing magic: there are several
normative approaches to it which can be very different.

State Law and Magic

If the relationship between magic and law in Indonesia were dis-
cussed in terms of the formal system of state law, the story would be
rather short, because there are practically no regulations concerning
magic. There are not direct references to magic and sorcery in either the
colonial legislation, or in the present-day Indonesian codes of law, and
there are only a few indirect ones. Three of these indirect references
occur in the Penal Code: 4 art. 545 prohibits anyone from engaging pro-
fessionally in fortune telling and explaining dreamr.; art. 546 makes it an
offense to sell or possess jimats or amulets and other supernatural
objects or to teach magic knowledge or skills, with the suggestion that
they may be carried out without fear of prosecution; art. 547 bans the
carrying oijimats when taking an oath in court. In two more legal regu-
lations the application of mutilating punishments and the use of
ordeals to obtain evidence are prohibited. 5
Apart from these few regulations, the problem of magic, sorcery, and
witchcraft: is, from the legislative perspective, nonexistent in Indone-
sian law, as it was in Dutch (or rather Netherlands-Indies) law, on
which it is based. This is not to suggest, however, that this is all there is
to be said about law and magic within the framework of the state legal
system. On the contrary, in the administration of justice in the state
courts law and magic frequently encounter each other. In particular
what we find is that it is not the act of magic itself which leads to this
confrontation, but rather the public reaction to it. This reaction often
constitutes an offense in terms of the Penal Code.
A general description of such cases would read as follows. A group
from the community or one of its members has been struck by extraor-
dinarily bad luck (death, illness, etc.) that is ascribed to the use of
magic. Once suspicion has settled on a presumed instigator, measures
will be taken against him/her. These may vary from relatively "mild"
(for example, gradual social isolation of the culprit or forced expulsion
from the society) to very vigorous ones such as the use of violence
against the goods and person of the culprit and the culprit's family,
sometimes even resulting in death. (See Chapter 7 for some specific
examples.) It is these violent and illegal reactions which attract the
Sorcery and the Law in Indonesia 139

attention of the legal system and constitute offenses against the Indo-
nesian Penal Code (arts. 338-361),6 rather than the use of magic in
itself.
Courts have dealt with these cases in different ways over the years.
Let us consider the approach during the colonial period before we enter
into a discussion of the present-day practice in Indonesian courts.

The Colonial Period

A global survey of the colonial administration of justice shows
that only a relatively small percentage of the caseload deals with magic.
These cases are not easily identifiable because they are registered as
offenses under the Penal Code, not as magic cases. It was not the prac-
titioner of magic who was on trial, but those who violently turned
against him, thereby infringing the law. They were charged with an
offense under the Penal Code. The element of magic was usually
brought up by the defense in these procedures, in justification of their
violent behavior as being a necessary reaction to acts of magic that were
threatening to society, and in accordance with traditional moral and
normative standards.
According to the criminal law of the Netherlands-Indies in the pre-
war colonial period,7 the acts committed against the presumed sorcerer
or witch were considered crimes (murder, manslaughter, etc.) that had
to be punished in accordance with the provisions of the law. The plea
that these acts were not at variance with traditional law {adat) and that
they were committed for the protection of the individual or the com-
munity from the evil attacks by malign spirits may incidentally have
resulted in less severe punishment. In most cases, however, these argu-
ments did not have this effect, because most judges, being Dutch, with
Western moral values and trained in Western law, loathed what they
considered the inhuman and irrational assaults on innocent victims.
Certain areas (outside Java and Madura),8 however, were not fully
subject to the criminal law of the colonial code.9 With regard to the
administration of justice in these areas, this implied a fundamentally
different situation: instead of the Western type of criminal law, the
autochthonous adat law had to be applied. The difficulties inherent in
this situation can be demonstrated by reference to former Netherlands
New Guinea. Magic rituals, containing certain acts that constituted a
crime under colonial law, occurred there probably more frequently
than in other parts of Indonesia. At the same time, the government
approach toward the autochthonous New Guinean population and its
140 HERMAN SLATTS AND KAKEN PORTIER

culture had become more lenient as a result of the pressure of world-

wide disapproval of colonialism.
Some fine examples are described and analyzed in an unpublished
dissertation (Bergh 1964) about suangi in the northwestern part of Irian
Jaya (formerly Netherlands New Guinea). A Suangi is a person, almost
always female, who is possessed by a malign spirit (a witch in Evans-
Pritchard's terms). Through her this spirit inflicts illness and death
upon other members of the society. If someone dies (for other than
"natural" reasons such as old age or being killed in battle), the male rel-
atives will go in search of the cause. If the dying person has not called
out someone's name (almost invariably a female relative), magic means
will be used or an oracle consulted10 to find out who might be held
responsible for the misfortune. The suspect will be informed that she
will be subjected to a trial by ordeal. Usually she participates voluntar-
ily. She will be taken to a particular spot in the forest and made to drink
a quantity of the sap of some kind of lianes. Then she is made to walk
and dance. Most of those submitted to such a treatment will start vom-
iting after a while, which is proof of guilt. She will die eventually or be
killed.11 Those who do not vomit or die are considered to be inno-
cent.12 The reason behind these executions is not primarily the punish-
ment of the person(s) concerned for socially unacceptable behavior, but
the elimination of the malign spirit in order to prevent more misfor-
tune from occurring.
Apparently, the whole process is regulated according to the (autoch-
thonous) rules in force and accepted as the way things have to be done:
the women are not taken by stealth, they do not run, they are not car-
ried by force to the place of the ordeal, and they swallow the poison13
without protest; bystanders do not interfere to protect the accused. It
is more or less clearly established which of the relatives has to inform
the woman under suspicion, which relatives have to be present at the
ordeal, who is to administer the poison, and so on. Note that we are
talking here about a body of normative rules and principles that, from
an anthropological point of view, can be labeled as law (as was indeed
acknowledged in the verdicts of these cases). How were these suangi
cases of magic and witchcraft dealt with in court?
Under the colonial law in force at that time, the administration of
justice for the autochthonous population in New Guinea had to be
based on its own adat law. So, in principle, it was not the Penal Code
that was to be applied to these cases, but indigenous law (Keuning
1961:29). There was, however, a repugnancy clause implying the non-
applicability of adat law if its application would be contrary to generally
Sorcery and the Law in Indonesia 141

accepted human values. In these cases the judge was not allowed to
replace the local adat law with the Penal Code, but he had to take that
into consideration and to judge "as a good father" or " a reasonable
man."
This regulation placed the judge in a very peculiar and difficult situa-
tion. If adat law was to be applied, the accused should be praised and
rewarded for having properly executed their law instead of being con-
demned; the judge's verdict would then imply approval of mmpfi exe-
cutions. This, however, would be contrary to the judge's own moral
convictions and not in line with the government policy to raise the
existing legal order in the territory to a more modern and humane
level. For that purpose it had to be made clear to the population that,
although the executions were acknowledged to be in accordance with
local adat law, they could not be tolerated under modern Western gov-
ernment. At the same time the verdict should not too deeply interfere
with local law, traditional processes, and social relations. To meet this
requirement the judges developed the practice of formulating their ver-
dict in the local language (so that they could refer to adat law), at the
same time pointing out that the act of adat "justice" essentially corre-
sponded with a criminal act defined and penalized in article such and
such of the Dutch Penal Code.
These cases lead to great outpourings of professional interpretations
of the criminal law (Keuning 1961:30-31). The repugnancy clause,
which was meant to apply as an exception only, became the rule. An
outstanding characteristic of this practice was the consistent tendency
in the administration of justice to protect those who were accused as
witches and to punish those who committed acts of violence against
them. 14

Present-day Indonesia
The state of affairs in present-day Indonesia is not the same as dur-
ing the colonial period, but the problem of magic does not seem to
have lost any o f its relevance. Although many changes have occurred in
several areas of social and cultural life, the belief in the supernatural has
persisted among Indonesians in general. Press reports about accusations
o f witchcraft and the consequent violent public reactions are an indica-
tion of that. A selection of newspaper headlines (translated from Indo-
nesian) is illustrative: "Accused of consorting with a beguganjantf*—
victim dies following eruption of public rage" (Waspada, 14 December
1987); "Siantar hearing of begu ¿anjang case postponed—defendant
142 HERMAN SLATTS AND KAKEN PORTIER

requests legal defence" (Sinar Indonesia Baru, 29 January 1988); " 9

Convicted by Simalungun court for destruction of house of Meranus
Gultom due to presense of a beguganjaryf (Sinar Indonesia Baru, 4 Feb-
ruary 1988); "Destruction of begu ¿¡anjang—Governor of Simalungun
determined to fight begujpnjang—dukun16 refuse to participate" (Tem-
po, 6 February 1988). The case reported in Waspada (14 December
1987) is typical of the violent type of witch handling.

The woman EbS, alias Aminah, fifty-five, resident of the village Sim-
pang Dolok, died on the evening of Friday 11th of December as a
result of a mass riot. She was rumored to have been consorting with a
beguganjang. The incident occurred after a number of deaths in the vil-
lage which local residents linked to the use ofguna^guna (black magic)
by someone in touch with a begu jpnjang. On the basis of rumors
spread via gossip, EbS was accused of consorting with a begu ¿¡anjang.
The middle-aged woman was said to be a "sower of death" who had to
be killed in order to prevent the death of more victims.Reacting to the
rumors, a number of villagers approached her house on Friday evening,
purposely armed with clublike weapons. Unaware of the situation, EbS
came out when her name was called. When she came out of her house,
she was attacked and beaten to death. Her five children, who all wit-
nessed the scene, did not intervene out of fear for their own lives.
Meanwhile her husband fled into the night. During preliminary inves-
tigations by the police, the twelve suspects confessed to having collec-
tively assaulted EbS, thereby causing her death. The reason they gave
for their action was that they were afraid of becoming victims of the
beguganjang with which EbS had been consorting.

In many other cases the facts are similar.

The construction of a full picture of these incidents is hampered by
the fact that another important element remains hidden—namely, the
aspect of social context. In other words, was the accusation of magic
used as an expression of condemnation of the alleged witch's previous
antisocial behavior? This is the question of the political function of
magic and magic accusations, in other words, magic used as a mecha-
nism, a tool for the control and manipulation of the social order (Zele-
nietz 1981:5; Geschiere 1989:201-202).
The approach of the Indonesian authorities since independence,
both within and outside the judicial system, has been different from
that in the colonial period. There has been a tendency to take magic
seriously and to treat it as an act that disrupts society, if not as a crime.
This has led to a shift in the focus of attention from those who commit
acts of violence against alleged witches to the "witches" themselves,
Sorcery and the law in Indonesia 143

along with an increasing disinclination to protect them when they are

the victims of violence. There is a growing readiness among officials of
the civil administration and court to hear complaints and accusations
on the subject of malign magic and witchcraft. In some ways this
change in approach can be seen as falling into line with popular
notions. The following example (Sembiring 1981) may serve to illus-
trate this tendency.

In 1978, 133 inhabitants of a village in Karo land wrote a letter to the

local government in which they expressed their uneasiness because of
the fact that recently so many of the children in the village had sud-
denly fallen victim to mysterious illnesses. According to the letter-writ-
ers, this was due to the presence and activity of a b%ju ¿¡crnjang. They
asserted that they knew who commanded this begu ganjang and men-
tioned his name. They requested the authorities to take appropriate
measures.

Despite the tendency to take magic more seriously, the judge is still
tied by the rules of the criminal code. In general, however, in our expe-
rience judges, public prosecutors, lawyers, and others appear to be no
less convinced than the rest of the community that phenomena exist
that are neither visible nor can be rationally explained. Like the plain-
tiffs and defendants in "magic" cases, they too have grown up with the
belief in and fear of evil spirits and magic, and would like to regard hair,
splinters of glass, and the like as admissible evidence of the use of
magic, although the law allows no possibility of doing so. These private
convictions, however, can influence their findings, as can be seen from
the leniency of the sentences handed out for perpetrators of violence,
while at times those accused of magic are punished for disturbing the
peace.

Recent Ideas about the Relationship

between Law and Magic
During the last decade or so the call for the replacement of the
colonial criminal law by genuine Indonesian regulations has become
stronger. It seems that the government has started the preparatory
work, including the collection of ideas about and approaches to future
developments. Our discussions with lawyers and university professors
of criminal law suggest a trend in jurisprudential circles of legal thinking
moving in the direction of popular notions of magic and sorcery. This
has potentially revolutionary implications for the relationship between
144 H E R M A N SLATTS AND KAREN PORTIER

state law and magic that has existed up to now. Those who argue for a
closer correspondence between legal ideas and popular thought advo-
cate the inclusion of provisions in the criminal code to prohibit the
practice of magic and make acts of magic punishable by law. This would
be a formalization of practices that have already developed in the
administration of justice. It would relieve the judge of the recurrent
dilemma of having to adjust the rules in each individual case according
to his opinion of what is needed in daily life.
On the other hand, however, the incorporation of magic into the
legal code is contrary to the working of the law as a rational system.
Problems will occur in the field of evidence, unless the strict principle
of causality is abandoned. This would be inconceivable to present-day
Western legal thinking, but it is acceptable within the system of law of a
society that puts emphasis on the community rather than the individ-
ual, on social order and stability rather than justice. It is hard to say to
what degree such ideas appeal to Indonesian legislators, and it is just as
difficult to predict exacdy what kind of practices might develop as a
consequence.
The situation in Papua New Guinea may be used as an example of
the problems that can be expected. There the dilemma was solved by
incorporating magic into the law differentiating between "malign" and
"non-malign" magic. Penalties were prescribed only for the former.17
However, this practice appeared to be unsatisfactory: " . . . because it
seemed to give the stamp of reality to sorcery: the government was say-
ing, in no uncertain terms, that witchcraft and sorcery did exist, but
the penalties for the practice [of magic] seemed woefully inadequate
from the local perspective when compared to the now illegal traditional
means of handling a sorcerer" (Zelenietz 1981:12). Furthermore, the
sanctions imposed by the court did not halt the violent self-help reac-
tions. Finally, there was the problem of evidence (see Westermark
1981:99), that is, how to prove causality between acts of magic and the
occurrence of misfortune?
The solution to that problem can be considered as a logical next step
in the control of magic by the law. As an example, we may refer to the
case of Cameroon (Geschiere 1989). There the problem of evidence
was solved by appointing a witchdoctor as a key witness to establish evi-
dence with regard to the question of whether magic acts of a malign
kind were committed. This created a very contradictory situation: on
the one hand, witchcraft and sorcery were prohibited by law; on the
other, the witchdoctor was made to play a key role in the court proce-
dure, fighting against magic and its occurrence (Geschiere 1989:202).
Sorcery and the law in Indonesia 145

Conclusion
Before their contact with Western culture there were many
societies in which magic (witchcraft and sorcery) used to be a "normal"
phenomenon. The moral and normative systems of these societies
defined it, how it should or should not be practiced, and how the soci-
ety should react to it. Problems occurred, however, when normative
and moral standards were made applicable that were alien to these cul-
tures during colonial domination. The possibility of evaluation of
behavior according to double normative and moral standards contin-
ued even after the former colonial states had achieved independence.
Hence magic, witchcraft, and sorcery have remained problematic phe-
nomena for the law, both legislatively and in the administration of
justice.
We have described the different responses of the official law of the
state (both during colonial rule and in the period following it) to
magic, witchcraft, and sorcery. They can be summarized in the follow-
ing models.
1. The absence of reference to magic in the law: there are no provi-
sions in the criminal code with regard to magic; the subject is nonexis-
tent. Therefore there is no way to complain about acts of magic. Vio-
lent acts directed against the person or goods of someone who is
accused of having committed malign magic are subject to the provisions
of the law and dealt with as crimes; the person accused of magic is pro-
tected by the formal system of law.
2. The formal system of law requires the application of traditional
customary law (which justifies vigorous action against practitioners of
malign magic) to the autochthonous population. Strict application of
this rule would imply full acceptance by the court of violent action by
the people against those accused of witchcraft. A repugnancy clause,
however, opens the possibility of deviating from the traditional law, the
consequences of which are unacceptable under the moral order of the
formal legal system. Those accused of magic are protected; those who
commit violence against them are punished. Punishments may be
severe, as they serve as deterrents in the process of developing the prim-
itive society and its institutions to modern conditions and higher moral
levels.
3. On the basis of the same body of law as sub 1 (no provisions
about magic in the formal system of law), the implementation of its
regulations in court is manipulated in the direction of traditional cus-
tomary law. Although judges are tied by the formal legal system, they
146 HERMAN SLATTS AND KAKEN PORTIER

are apt to take magic seriously. There is a tendency to be lenient to

committers of violence against suspects of magic and to punish the lat-
ter for disturbing the peace and order in society.
4. The existence of magic, witchcraft, and sorcery is recognized in
the formal system of law by the introduction of provisions prohibiting
the practice of (malign) magic and making it punishable. The court can
be approached with complaints about magic. The focus is on those
accused of malign magic who are subject to punishment under (new)
criminal law provisions. The character of the punishment and problems
in the provision of evidence made this policy inadequate to control
accusations of magic by legal means.
5. Formal acknowledgment of magic in the legal system as in point
4. It is logical that procedural problems of evidence could be solved, as
in Cameroon, by taking recourse to the participation of witchdoctors as
witnesses/experts in the court procedure. The application of magic is
sought through the application of magic (by the witchdoctors/witness).
This ultimate form of integration of the irrational (magic) and the
rational (law) elements leads to the erosion of the rational system of
law, inevitably opening the way to other forms of social control.

Notes and References

1. In 1987 and 1988 we were in Indonesia for a few months to give a
course of lectures on the anthropology of law at the University of North Suma-
tra, Medan. At the time our attention was drawn to an unusual number of
reports in regional and national newspapers about—often violent—cases of
magic. The leading Indonesian weekly Tempo, no. 40 (5 December 1987), even
devoted a lengthy article to the phenomenon. (We had previously paid atten-
tion to the problem of magic in Indonesia in Indonesia Circle, 1989.) During
our previous researches between 1973 and 1984, which focused on land law
and the process of formal decision making in Karo Batak village society, we had
on occasion come across cases of magic, but these were not usually very spec-
tacular and never implied violence against a person's goods or physical integ-
rity. Violent magic only took place in the past, it was said; it no longer
occurred today. We did not have the opportunity to investigate thoroughly
whether the ascending number of press reports represented an increase in the
occurrence of cases or only public attention to them. However, they did lead
us to question the relationship between magic and law in society today.
2. See, for example, Douglas 1970:xxix-xxvi; Zelenietz 1981:13; Lehmann
and Myers 1985:149; Marwick 1987:12-18.
3. The basis of Indonesian state law is Dutch law, which was retained after
the colonial period until its replacement by genuine Indonesian law. Although
some major laws (e.g., Basic Agrarian Law 1960, Marriage Law 1974) and a
great number of lower-level legal regulations were enacted, the endeavor to
replace the colonial legal system by one that properly reflected the Indonesian
Sorcery and the Law in Indonesia 147

spirit turned out to be far more difficult than had been realized in the early
days of the Indonesian independence.
4. It is remarkable that, although the text of the law was translated from
Dutch into Indonesian and adaptations were made in its formulation, the level
of the fines has never been adapted to the devaluation of the Indonesian cur-
rency: a fine of, say, 300 guilders in colonial times used to be very substantial,
300 rupiahs today is perhaps just enough to buy a packet of cigarettes (cf.
Engelbrecht 1954:1083b; Moeljatno 1982:232).
5. See Bechtsbedeeling naar de godsdienstige wetten, volksinstellingm en gebruikm
in de residentie Atjeh en Onderhoorighedm (etc.), art. 14, sub 2; and Belling van
de Inheemsche rechtspraak in een deel van het rechtstreeks bestuurdgebied, waar de be-
volking isgelaten in het genot van hoar eigen rechtsplegitig, art. 42 (Engelbrecht
1954:1507,1515).
6. Engelbrecht 1954:1081z-1082a; Moeljatno 1982:147-153.
7. Wetboek van Strafrecht voor Indonesie (the Penal Code) and the Beglement op
de Strafoordering, the Landgerechtregletnent, and the Herzien Indonesisch Reglement
(holding procedural provisions).
8. See Begeling van de Inheemsche rechtspraak in em deel van het rechtstreeks be-
stuurd gehied, waar de bevolking is gelaten in hetgenot van hoar eigen rechtspleging,
art. 1 (Engelbrecht 1954:1509-1510).
9. Only the provisions of the Penal Code concerning offenses like endanger-
ing the national security or public order and insulting the head of state and the
like were applicable. Bating van de Inheemsche rechtspraak, etc., art. 4. (Engel-
brecht 1954:1511).
10. For an earlier description of other ways of doing this, see Rietschoten
1914:72-73.
11. Wijngaarden (1894:218), however, reported that among the Savoe a
suangi was expelled or lashed.
12. Similar cases of execution of a witch/sorcerer in other populations were
reported by Ten Kate 1894 (Timor), Hessing 1920 (Timor), v. Suchtelen 1920
(Flores), Kruyt 1923 (MentaWai).
13. Bergh (1964:28, 44) reports that a chemical test of the sap revealed no
poisonous components that could cause death through oral ingestion and that
other materials used in ordeals were consumed in daily life without doing any
harm.
14. See, for example Adriani 1932:407; Held 1950:171.
15. A North Sumatran term for a malign, dangerous spirit. In other parts of
Indonesia different names are used for similar phenomena, for example: teluk
(West Java), leak (Bali), suangi (Irian Jaya, the Indonesian part of New Guinea).
16. Dukun is a neutral term for a wide range of people with supernatural
expertise, either good or bad (medium, healer, witchdoctor, sorcerer, etc.).
17. Sorcery Ordinance (Territory of Papua and New Guinea) 1971, see Zele-
nietz 1981:12.

Adriani, N. 1932. Verzamelde Geschriftm 1. Haarlem: Erven F. Bohn.

Beidelman, T. O. 1970. Towards more open theoretical interpretations. In
Witchcraft confessions and accusations, ed. M. Douglas, 351-357. ASA Mon-
ograph in Social Anthropology 9. London: Tavistock Publications.
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Benda-Beckmann, K. von, and F. Strijbosch, eds. 1986. Anthropology of law in

the Netherlands: Essays on Itgal pluralism. Dordrecht: Foris.
Bergh, & R. 1964. Soeangi in de Vogelkop van Nieuw-Guinea. Unpublished
dissertation, Oegstgeest.
Douglas, M., ed. 1970. Witchcraft confessions and accusations. ASA Monograph
in Social Anthropology 9. London: Tavistock Publications.
Engelbrecht, W. A., ed. 1954. Kitab Undang2, Undartg2 dan Peraturan2 serta
Undang2 Dasar Sementara Bepublik Indonesia—De Wetboekm, Wetten en Ver-
ordeningen, benevens de Voorlopige Grondwet van de Bepubliek Lndonesie. Leiden:
Sijthoff.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1931. Sorcery and native opinion. Afiica 4(1): 22-55.
. 1937. Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande. Oxford: Claren-
don Press.
Geschiere, P. 1989. Heksen voor de rechter: de overheid op heksenjacht in
Oost-Kameroen. Sociobgischegids 36:187-207, Meppel: Boom.
Held, G. J. 1950. Magie, Hekserijen Toverij. Groningen/Djakarta: Wolters.
Hessing, J. 1920. Zeden en Gewoonten der Timoreezen. De Timorbode.
Kate, H. F. C. ten 1894. Verslag eener reis in de Timorgroep en Polynesie.
Tijdschrift Aardrijkskundig Genootschap 11.
Keuning, J. 1961. Nederlandse Strafrechtspraak aan de Wisselmeren. Bijdragen
tot de TaaL-, Land-en Volkenkunde 117:26-50.
Kruyt, A. C. 1923. De Mentawaiers. TijdschriftBataviaasch Genootschap 62.
Lehmann, A. C., and J. E. Myers. 1985. Magic, witchcraft, and religion. Palo
Alto/London: Mayfield Publishing Company.
Malinowski, B. 1940. Crime and custom in savage society. London: Kegan Paul,
Trench, Trubner & Co.
Marwick, M., ed. 1987. Witchcraft and sorcery. Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books.
Moeljatno, 1982. Kitab Undang-undang Hukum Pidana. Jakarta: PT Bina
Aksara.
Moore, S. F. 1983. Law as process: An anthropological approach. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Rietschoten, C. H. van. 1914. Tocht over Timor. InMededeelingen Encyclopae-
dist Bureau, vol. 3.
Sembiring, D. 1981. Perbuatan Palasik dan Sejenisnya ditinjau dari Pasal 1
Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Pidana. Unpublished dissertation, Fak.
Hukum Universitas Sumatera Utara, Medan.
Slaats, H. M. C., and M. K. Portier. 1989. Upholders of the law and practi-
tioners of magic: A social and legal problem in Indonesia. Indonesia Circle,
nos. 47-48:29-36.
Suchtelen, Jhr. B. C. C. M. M. van. 1921. Endeh (Flores). In Mededeetingen
Encyclopaedist Bureau, vol. 26.
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Analysis, no. 8:89-101 (University of Adelaide).
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sis, no. 8:3-15 (University of Adelaide).
 9
Knowledge, Power, and Personal
Misfortune in a Malay Context
M I C H A E L G . PELETZ

W H E N I RETURNED to the Malay community of Bogang in the

summer of 1987 after an absence of about seven years, I was immedi-
ately struck by continuities and changes in the composition of the vil-
lage. To my pleasant surprise, many of the oldest members of the vil-
lage—now in their eighties—were still alive, and others who, during my
previous research appeared to be permanendy disabled, were now func-
tioning rather well. At the same time, I was shocked to discover that
one of my better friends, a local luminary named Haji Yahya, had suf-
fered a slow, painful death that his detractors attributed to divine (or
other mystical) punishment for his allegedly evil ways. Even more dis-
tressing was learning that Haji Yahya's son, Rashid, had become quite
ill after his father died; in fact, by most accounts, Rashid was near death
himself due to the ravages of sorcery. Although I was never able to con-
firm that sorcery was the actual cause of Rashid's afflictions, it was clear
that he had been paralyzed, had dropped down to about eighty
pounds, and was mostly skin and bones. This was disturbing to me
partly because Rashid and I had spent a fair amount of time together
during the early period of my first research and, friendship aside, were
also fairly close in age and outlook.
Perhaps most distressing, however, was the realization that Rashid
and his family, despite their prominence, had succumbed to a dreadful
fate. This realization made it painfully clear to me that one's ability to
control one's own life and others—in short, one's autonomy and social
control—is ultimately quite limited. It also encouraged me to reflect on
some of the central themes in Weiner's (1976) study of ceremonial
exchange in the Trobriands, which I reread shortly before returning to

149
150 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

the field. Weiner (1976:219 et passim) argues inter alia that people in
the Trobriands seek control over others but are invariably constrained,
both in the pursuit and the actual exercise of such control, by the for-
mal rules of social interaction; that total control over others is never
really assured, for everyone (each and every other) is endowed with
some measure of autonomy and ultimately dies; and that there is thus
an inherent threat of rejection and danger in most (if not all) social rela-
tions. Weiner goes on to propose that magic and sorcery entail a realiza-
tion of concerns with autonomy and social control (and are thus profit-
ably viewed as counterparts to formal exchange, which entails similar
concerns); and that they tend to flourish in societies in which one never
really knows what is on the minds of others.
This chapter explores certain of the implications of these latter points
and is particularly concerned with local beliefs pertaining to ilmu, a cen-
tral concept in Malay culture that refers to knowledge—especially eso-
teric knowledge, science, and intelligence.1 The chapter is organized in
five sections. The first provides background material on the locus of my
research. The second focuses on healers (dukun), their acquisition of
ilmu, and some of the ways ilmu is deployed in healing rituals and other
contexts. The third deals with various aspects and implications of the
belief that ilmu is both widely distributed in local society (not simply
concentrated among ritual specialists) and commonly used for nefari-
ous purposes. The fourth examines such beliefs in greater detail by pre-
senting two case studies of illness and personal misfortune, along with a
discussion of the contrasting interpretations of them that I encoun-
tered in the course of my research. The final section of the essay pro-
vides a broader analysis of these and related cases, and suggests, among
other things, that they indicate recent historical changes in the sources
and meanings of marginality, uncertainty, danger, and power.

Ethnographic Context
The material presented here is based on field research carried out
from 1978 to 1980 and 1987 to 1988. The research was conducted in
the state of Negeri Sembilan, which is located in the southwestern
region of the Malay Peninsula (West Malaysia). Negeri Sembilan has a
(1980) population of about 573,500 people, which the census divides
into three major categories: "Malays," who make up 46.2 percent of
the total; "Chinese," who comprise 36.6 percent; and "Indians,"
who, along with "Others," account for the remaining 17.2 percent
(Government of Malaysia, 1983). The Malays, who are the focus of this
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 151

paper, reside mostly in ethnically homogeneous rural areas. Their eco-

nomic activities include the subsistence cultivation of wet-rice, the pro-
duction of rubber for the world market, and, in the case of some
households, one or another form of wage labor and/or government
service.
The Malays of Negeri Sembilan have much in common with Malays
elsewhere in the Peninsula, but they also differ in various ways. As for
the most basic commonalities, all Malays speak a common language,
identify with the Shafi'i branch of Sunni Islam, and order various
aspects of their social relations in accordance with a body of cultural
codes glossed adat ("tradition," "custom," "customary law"). While
the adat concept symbolizes basic similarities among all Malays, it also
symbolizes important contrasts, for there are two major variants of adat
in the Peninsula. The first, referred to as adatperpatih, is predominant
in Negeri Sembilan (and in the Naning district of Melaka), and has long
been associated with a social structure having descent units of matrilin-
eal design, which reflects the Minangkabau (Sumatran) ancestry of the
area's first permanent settlers, who began immigrating to Negeri Sem-
bilan in the 1500s (and perhaps even earlier). The second, known as
adat temetiggotig, prevails in all other regions of the Peninsula and has
long been linked with a social structure that is usually characterized as
bilateral (or cognatic).

Healers, Knowledge, and Power

The term ilmu is sometimes used in Negeri Sembilan to refer to
esoteric knowledge of a specifically Islamic nature, though it usually
denotes syncretic knowledge, which is largely pre-Islamic (Hindu-Bud-
dhist and pre-Indic [animist]), and which increasingly falls outside the
domains of agama ("religion") and adat. This esoteric knowledge con-
cerns the origins and fundamental elements and essences o f the uni-
verse and less encompassing entities such as the human body; the inter-
relations and dynamics of these elements; the principles informing their
interaction; and how to "read," interpret, and manipulate their various
guises and manifestations. The term ilmu is frequendy used without
any qualifiers, in short declarative statements, such as "he has (or uses)
ilmu" (dia ada [orpakat] ilmu). But ilmu is not something people usu-
ally talk about openly; and when someone remarks that this or that
person in the community has or exercises ilmu, they typically do so qui-
edy, with more than the usual reserve, and a degree of reverence and
fear.
152 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

Ilmu is believed to be widely distributed in local society, especially

among adults who have sought to acquire it, but it is also assumed to
be concentrated among certain classes of individuals, such as dukun
(healers) andpawavg (shamans, shamanic specialists).2 In the fieldwork
site of Bogang, for example, which has a (1988) population of more
than five hundred people, there are dozens of people who have at least
some ilmu, only eight or nine of whom are ritual specialists.
The vast majority of these specialists are referred to as dukun, which I
gloss as "healer(s)." In times past dukun treated a wide range of illnesses
and afflictions, including fevers, headaches, muscular aches and spasms,
respiratory problems, gastrointestinal disorders, fractured and broken
bones, as well as poisoning, sorcery, spirit possession, and so on. At
present, however, many dukun tend to specialize in the treatment of
victims of poisoning, sorcery, and spirit possession. This is partly
because many of the other types of ailments dukun once treated are
nowadays usually taken to modern medical practitioners, whose ser-
vices are available in nearby towns and from mobile clinics that fre-
quent rural communities.
We need to distinguish dukun from ritual practitioners known as
pawang, whom I refer to as "shamans" and "shamanic specialists,"
even though (but also because) there are no practicing pawcmg in
Bogang or most other areas of Negeri Sembilan.3 Pawang have many of
the same forms of knowledge and skills as dukun, but they have the
added responsibility of overseeing and mediating local relationships of
reciprocity and metaphorical kinship between the world of humans and
the realms of spirits and nature. Their shamanic skills are more central
to their social roles than is the case with dukun (even though some
dukun serve as shamans as well), and they occupy a more exalted posi-
tion in the (traditional) community hierarchy, being likened on occa-
sion to heads of mosque districts {imam) and traditional District Chiefs
{Undang). As in Johore and other areas of the Peninsula (Burridge
1957:99-101), pawanpj are also viewed with far more ambivalence than
dukun-, this is partly because of their closer association with spirits,
demons, and the netherworld, but it is also due to their ability (in
times past) to extract annual tribute from villagers who benefited from
their services.
In recent publications (Peletz 1988a, 1988b, 1993) I have discussed
various aspects of social and religious change in Negeri Sembilan (cf.
McAllister 1987; Stivens 1991). Here I will simply remark that twenti-
eth-century forces of Islamic nationalism and reform, along with the
spread of modern education and Western medicine, have contributed
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 153

to the demise of many features of spirit cults and most forms of sha-
manism and traditional midwifery. One consequence of these changes
is that there has been a constriction in the social fields and arenas in
which ilmu is utilized: contemporary dukun are not only the major
repositories of ilmu\ they have also seen their traditional services
restricted, and are viewed with far more skepticism and ambivalence
than at any point in times past. The majority of Bogang's dukun are in
their sixties and seventies, and few if any of them will be replaced by the
younger generation of villagers. Thus, with the passing of the current
generation of dukun, many forms of ilmu may well be lost forever. Far
from being unique to Negeri Sembilan or other parts of Malaysia, this
situation has parallels in Indonesia (Hefner 1985), Vietnam, Cambo-
dia, and Laos (Laderman and Van Esterik 1988:748), and elsewhere in
Southeast Asia and beyond.
In the discussion that follows I present information on four of
Bogang's dukun, which will provide insights into an important institu-
tion in local society and culture, contemporary understandings and
deployments of knowledge and power, and recent social and religious
change.

PakDaud
Pak Daud, my adoptive father, is a renowned healer specializing in
treating victims of poisoning and sorcery, who is presently sixty-six
years old. Pak Daud treated victims of poisoning and sorcery on almost
every night of the more than sixteen months that I spent in Bogang
during my first period of research, and I had the good fortune of being
able to observe many healing rituals he performed. I have commented
on Pak Daud and his curing sessions elsewhere (Peletz 1988a), and will
thus be brief here. Pak Daud acquired his ilmu from his father and his
father-in-law, both of whom were ritual specialists in their own right.
This entailed lengthy periods of fasting and prayer, submitting to
numerous food and other prohibitions, and battling with spirits over
whom he was learning to gain a measure of control. In the course of his
apprenticeship, Pak Daud refined his powers of concentration and
prayer, and otherwise developed control over his inner self, the latter
being a goal of all dukun, and, to a lesser extent, of all other Malays as
well (cf. Anderson 1972:8-13).
Most of Pak Daud's patients are adolescent or adult males,4 and the
majority of them seek treatment from him because they believe they
have been poisoned either through ingesting physical matter with
inherently or ritually induced poisonous substances (bisd) or as a result
154 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

of inhaling malevolent currents or winds (origin) manipulated through

sorcery (ilmujjhaib, sihir). Toward the beginning of the session, patients
provide Pak Daud with information on the symptoms they have expe-
rienced, such as certain types of headaches and coughs, appetite and
weight loss, spitting of blood, vomiting, and so on. But patients nei-
ther seek nor seem to need Pak Daud's explicit verbal confirmation of
the nature of their disorders; for by the time they consult him (or
another dukun), they have already concluded, frequently in conversa-
tions with kin, that they have been poisoned and thus that they are not
merely individuals with an illness, but rather, and more importandy,
the victims of aggressive antisocial attack. It merits remark, too, that no
one present at the healing session seems particularly concerned to ascer-
tain the original form or vector of the poison, or its precise mode of
entry into the victim's body. Nor does anyone present at the session
display much concern with identifying the individual(s) responsible for
the patient's afflictions. The patient and his family typically have a
good sense of who the individual(s) might be, but the issue does not
come up for discussion at any point in Pak Daud's healing rituals. More
generally, as in Java, where "there is no way in which sorcery can be
established as a public crime or even a tort, [it is highly unusual to] dis-
cover a case in which direct confrontation by the victim of the accused
took place or where any general open accusation was made or any claim
for punishment or damages instituted—there being no formal proce-
dures for doing so in any case" (Geertz 1960:110; see also Bowen,
Chap. 10).
The treatment Pak Daud provides includes preparing the juice of a
young coconut for the patient to drink. (Coconut juice is believed to
have "cooling" properties and is thus essential for the treatment of poi-
soning and other ailments whose manifestations include excessive
[humoral] heat.) This preparation involves cutting a small hole through
to the interior of the coconut, and then reciting and blowing incanta-
tions (jampi) over the hole so as to infuse the juices inside with the effi-
cacy of the chants. These incantations are widely assumed to be at least
partly Islamic in nature and at least partly Arabic in form, and to
include Ya Sin, the 36th chapter (sura) of the Koran (according to the
traditional sequence of chapters). This belief imbues the ritual incanta-
tions of Pak Daud (and other dukun) with the authority and sanctity of
Arabic, which Malays (and other Muslims) regard as the most sacred of
all languages, since it was the language spoken by the Prophet Moham-
mad and God Himself (via the archangel Gabriel to Mohammad), and
since, largely for this reason, it continues to be the primary language in
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 155

which the Koran appears locally. The same belief serves to vest the rit-
ual incantations of Pak Daud (and other dukun) with the authority and
power of God, since it is God who is held to have been responsible for
establishing the language of ritual. To this I need only add that, for
Malays, even ordinary language has "an independent existence and the
power to influence reality" (Tambiah 1968:184 et passim).
The assumption that Pak Daud's incantations are at least partly
Islamic and Arabic cannot be verified by the patient or others who
accompanied him to Pak Daud's house because the incantations, which
are barely audible, are unintelligible to everyone but Pak Daud. While
this situation enhances both the mystery surrounding Pak Daud's ilmu
and the efficacy of the rituals he performs, it also poses problems: it
opens the door to suspicions that his chants may not be entirely Islamic
in origin, and it raises the specter that Pak Daud may be in league with
dangerous spirits whose supplication entails pre-Islamic practices that
go against the grain of monotheistic Islam. 5
After the coconut juice has been properly prepared and given to the
patient to drink, Pak Daud fetches a large banana leaf to be used in the
next stage of the treatment. He wipes the leaf clean, inspects it care-
fully, and places it atop a table to which the patient is summoned. The
patient is then instructed to remove his shirt, lean directly over the leaf,
and place his head down so that it rests just a few inches from the leafs
broad surface. Thus begins another phase of the ritual, one character-
ized by Pak Daud's patting the patient's back in circular motion for a
few moments, all the while chanting rhythmically, but again almost
inaudibly. Thereafter, Pak Daud, the patient, and occasionally some of
the others present examine the leaf at some length, looking both for
poisonous substances (tiny slivers of bamboo, ground glass, etc.) and
for any separate evidence of poison that may have been—and hopefully
was—expelled as a consequence of Pak Daud's chanting and other
actions.
These searches comprise the most dramatic stage of the healing pro-
cess and are also fraught with considerable anxiety, particularly for the
patient. As with the ritual's overall emphasis on ingestion and expul-
sion, these searches facilitate the psychological process of abreaction
(see Lévi-Strauss 1963a: 175; 1963b: 192-193 et passim) by focusing
attention and sentiments on bodily boundaries and the importance of
maintaining the integrity of one's body and one's self (exuviae, effluvia,
penetration/intrusion, retentiveness, loss/extrusion, etc.), on the dan-
gers of consuming contaminated foods and other poisonous sub-
stances, and on the perils of mixing with untrustworthy individuals.
156 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

These dimensions of the treatment are necessary but not sufficient to

rid the body of poison or its effects. First, most cases of poisoning
require more than a single session, and some of them need as many as
ten. Second (though equally important), as Pak Daud explains toward
the end of the first session, the patient should refrain from attending
funerals and other distressing events that might upset his emotional
balance, as well as avoid physically strenuous activities associated with
rice cultivation, rubber tapping, and the like. In addition, the patient is
enjoined to avoid the consumption of foods that might further accen-
tuate (or lead to new) humoral imbalances in his body, especially foods
classed as sejuk ("cool"), ¿fatal ("scratchy"), or bisa ("toxic/allergen-
ic"). Along with these lists of taboos (pantang), the patient is given a list
of items to be ingested at home (see Peletz 1988a:155), which, if
ingested in the combinations and sequences specified by Pak Daud, will
help neutralize the poison and its physiological consequences, and will
operate, in addition, to purge the body of all pollutants.
Pak Daud's treatment of individuals who are possessed by spirits,
such as pelisit, differs from the scenario outlined above in a number of
ways. Before commenting on this treatment I need to note that the
pelisit is the most renowned and feared spirit in the demonological sys-
tem; it frequently takes the form of a grasshopper with sharp, bloody
teeth, and is capable of causing protracted, and eventually fatal, illness,
as well as immediate death. There are actually two different kinds of
pelisit—one that is "domesticated" and harbored by a human master,
and one that is "undomesticated" or "wild"—but villagers talk mainly,
and seem to be most afraid, of the variety that is tamed and controlled
by humans. Pelisit temporarily take control of the bodies and minds of
the individuals that their masters instruct them to attack; that is, they
"possess" their victims. Symptoms of such possession include: red
spots or rashes, cramps, and unconsciousness; otherwise unprovoked
fits of screaming and abusive language; the ability to speak in languages
(e.g., Tamil, Chinese, English) of which the victim has no prior knowl-
edge; extremely spasmodic body movements and tremendous physical
power; and the neglect of, or refusal to perform, basic chores and ser-
vices seen as central to one's social role. These symptoms usually occur
in combination, and if the person exhibiting them is not treated, they
can lead to serious illness and death.
When Pak Daud treats someone who is possessed by a pelisit, he
searches the victim's body for telltale marks such as red spots, bite
marks, and the like. He then pinches the area where he believes the peli-
sit attacked or is residing, such as the region between thefingers,where
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 157

the fingers join the hand. More generally, like other dukun in Bogang
and elsewhere in the Malay world, Pak Daud attempts to ascertain who
the spirit's master is and to exorcise the spirit (with incense, noxious
fumes, charmed water, and incantations) and call the victim's "life
force" or semangat back into his or her body by blowing on the victim's
head.

Mak Ijah
Another of Bogang's healers is a sixty-seven-year-old woman by the
name of Mak Ijah. Mak Ijah never had any children of her own, has
been married five times, and, as she put it, treats "everything from
injured bones to spirit possession, except diabetes, high blood pressure,
and heart disease." Mak Ijah acquired her ilmu in more dramatic fash-
ion than Pak Daud: as she was chanting and fighting off delirium-
inducing fever (and perhaps death itself) brought about by her adop-
tive daughter's attempt to murder her and her husband through
sorcery (by mystically injecting needles and stones into their bodies).
Unlike Pak Daud, Mak Ijah is expressive and dramatic, extremely high-
strung, and quite marginal in the community. And she is viewed with
much skepticism by others in the village. This is partly because Mak
Ijah goes into a trance (turun^menurun) in the course of her healing rit-
uals, unlike most (if not all) other healers in Bogang; but it is also due
to her having financed her pilgrimage to Mecca with money obtained
from patients whom she is widely believed to have exploited. Most of
Mak Ijah's patients come from other villages, but this is a common pat-
tern in Bogang and elsewhere in Negeri Sembilan (Swift 1965:164),
and among Javanese (Geertz 1960:90) and others. As Obeyesekere
(1969:180) suggests, it is probably related to the fact that it "facilitates
the performance of the priest role by creating a social distance between
priest and audience."
Mak Ijah is more talkative than other dukun, and both she and her
husband were (in my experience) uncharacteristically forthcoming
about the quality of social relations in the village and among Malays in
general. In their view, fellow villagers (and most other Malays) know
very little about Islam and are consumed by the passions of greed, envy,
and malice; these, along with obsessive concerns about face and honor,
are responsible for the "treachery" (khianat) that suffuses local social
relations. Not surprisingly, Mak Ijah's husband would rather have his
two acres of rubber trees go untapped than have them worked by
someone who might possibly cheat him of his rightful share (50 percent
of the tapper's yield), even though this results in the land lying
158 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

unworked and hence in a substantially reduced household income.

Summing up his experience with tenant tappers in metaphors of food
and eating, he said, "The [tenant] tapper gets all of the meat, while the
owner is left with the sauce" (prang potong dapat daging, orang punya
dapat kwa saja). On another occasion he characterized his overall experi-
ences with local reciprocity by remarking with disgust, "You give flow-
ers and get shit in return" (kasih bunpya, balas tabi).
These latter comments point to pervasive cultural motifs that depict
various breaches of the social order in the imagery of food and eating.
These comments also highlight profound ambivalences concerning
human nature and social relations, which help to explain why dukun
and their craft continue to occupy positions of importance in Negeri
Sembilan and other parts of the Malay Peninsula despite the decline of
traditional midwifery and most forms of shamanism and spirit cults.

Pak Ibrahim
Pak Ibrahim, age sixty-nine, treats headaches, coughs, fevers, and so
on, as well as poisoning and spirit possession. In 1980 we spoke at
some length about his acquisition of ilmu, the parallels between the
human body and the universe, some of the tension between ilmu and
Islam, and certain dangers of sharing one's ilmu with others.

It [ilmu] came in my dreams, from my father and my grandfather, who

had already died. . . . One night I was sleeping, after having bathed,
prayed, and cleansed myself with lime; incense was burning and I had
asked God to show me ilmu. He taught me . . . over the course of
many months. . . .
Dreams . . . show us what things to read to the sick, what things to
give them. It is all in the Koran. . . . Jampi [spells] are in the Koran
too. But some Muslim dukun don't use Koranic jampi. They rely on
jinn and syaitan [spirits and the Devil], and they worship trees and
rocks, like orang putih ["white people"] and the Chinese, which is
a sin.

Pak Ibrahim explained that the four archangels (Mikail, Jibrail, Israfil,
and Azrail) were important to him, and that his reliance on their aid
enabled him to bring about many cures. The four archangels are asso-
ciated with the four corners of the world and the four vital elements of
the universe (earth, wind, fire, and water), but Pak Ibrahim was unclear
and contradictory on the correspondence, if any, between specific arch-
angels, on the one hand, and specific corners of the world and vital ele-
ments, on the other.
Personal Misfortune in a, Malay Context 159

Although Pak Ibrahim provided a fair amount of information on

ilmu, he was initially quite reluctant to go into any detail. The main
reason seemed to be that I might possibly discuss the fine points of
what he conveyed to me with other villagers or with Malays outside
Bogang. " I f I told others about these things, they would go into busi-
ness and make money, curing people here and there." Also, his father
and grandfather, from whom he received his knowledge, might be
upset by his sharing it with others. Pak Ibrahim added that those with
"deep knowledge" (ilmu tinggi) don't talk a lot, lest they anger God.
In referring to bragging and gloating about one's abilities in curing,
driving away evil spirits, and the like, Pak Ibrahim reiterated that one
should not allow knowledge in these areas to go to one's head, and that
it is only through God that we are allowed to attain it.
He went on to say, "Other people would not be able to explain
these things to you," and then elaborated on the superficial knowledge
of other dukun in the village. And he boasted that Haji Salleh, the alim
(Islamic man of learning) who comes to Bogang twice a month to
enlighten villagers on various aspects of Islam, is the only other person
in the area who has an in-depth understanding of these matters. Pak
Ibrahim's own understanding of ilmu is more comprehensive, how-
ever; this is why Haji Salleh will not talk to him; perhaps, Pak Ibrahim
opined, Haji Salleh is embarrassed or feels inferior in light of Pak Ibra-
him's more extensive understanding of ilmu.

Datuk Latiff
Datuk Latiff, who was about eighty-two years old when I last saw him
in 1980, is another of Bogang's dukun. Datuk Latiff is a large, imposing
man who made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1969; he specializes in
"love magic" (ilmu pertgasih) and is viewed with considerable suspicion
and fear by many people in the village. Some of the suspicion toward
him is probably due to his association with the opposition political
party and his residence in an area of Bogang that is widely associated
with juvenile delinquents and other "troublemakers." In any case, he is
said to harbor spirits (simpan jinn), which are at his disposal and will do
his bidding for him.
Datuk Latiff seems to be feared more than any of Bogang's other
dukun, but he also has his supporters. One of them, an urbane school-
teacher in her thirties, insisted that he uses his ilmu for positive pur-
poses, not negative ones. He employs love magic, for example, to bring
people together, not to force them apart. The teacher underscored that
Datuk LatifTs success as a dukun depends in no small measure on his
160 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

praying conscientiously and otherwise being a devout Muslim. He does

in fact spend much of his time reciting the Koran; and he is known to
have numerous copies of the Koran in his house and to have many
framed Koranic passages on the walls, as well.
Datuk Latiff was the first to explain to me that it is humans' posses-
sion of akal (reason, rationality, intelligence) that separates them from
other animals, and that «¿»/and bati (liver, the "seat of the emotions")
"work together" in all humans. He referred to the liver as the "ruler"
(raja) of the human body, and noted that it "governs" or "regulates"
(merintah) the rest of the body much like a ruler or commander governs
his army. In other contexts he remarked that itnan (faith, strong belief
or trust in God, sincerity, resoluteness) is the "ruler" or "magistrate"
(hakim) within us, and that one's iman "cooperates" with akal to
"kill" nafsu (bodily desire, passion), or at least "keep it in check".
Such views and expressions are of interest in light of their emphasis
on cooperation, struggle, and killing, and on the roles of ruler, com-
mander, and magistrate. In particular, these views suggest that society
and the body politic provide a ready store of symbols and idioms
through which to conceptualize and express ideas about the composi-
tion of the human body, as well as human nature.6 They suggest, in
addition, that the human body is regarded much like a ruler's realm or
territory, and that the health and illness of the body are conceptualized
in much the same terms as sociopolitical order and disorder, respec-
tively. Thus, the individual experiences well-being when cooperation
and balance obtain among the elements comprising his or her body, all
of which is a sign that the "ruler" of the body is in command of its
realm. Conversely, the individual experiences illness when cooperation
and balance no longer prevail among the constituent elements of his or
her body, which is an indication that the "ruler" of the body has lost
control of its realm. These and related themes concerning control and
sovereignty are of critical importance and should be kept in mind
throughout the ensuing discussion.
Although I have spoken of Datuk Latiff in the present tense, he was
killed in an automobile accident in 1980, a few months after I com-
pleted my first period of research. When I returned to Bogang in 1987,
I heard that his pelisit descended to someone else in his household and
still resides in his house (or compound), occasionally attacking people
passing by late at night. This bit of village lore is significant: it points up
more general themes about the pervasive scope and force of belief in
spirits—especially those harbored and manipulated by fellow villagers—
and human malevolence. I shall return to these issues in due course.
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 161

Knowledge, Power, and Danger

These, then, are four of Bogang's dukun. Along with the other
dukun in Bogang, they are the chief repositories of ilmu in the village;
their ritual performances, in turn, are the principal contexts in which
ilmu is deployed in a public, and legitimate, fashion. We need to recall,
however, that ilmu is held to be widely distributed in local society and
not simply concentrated among dukun (pt pawang). In short, to appre-
ciate fully local perceptions of ilmu and the role it plays in Bogang's
social arenas, we must bear in mind that there are dozens of people in
the village who are believed to enjoy, and use, the powers of ilmu. A
few examples concerning the deployment of ilmu by those who are not
ritual specialists of any sort may be useful here. My neighbor Mak
Rahmah once confided in me that she used ilmu, not only on her hus-
band, to help ensure that he would remain faithful to her and never
leave her for another woman, but also on her grandson, in an effort to
get him to study more diligently and otherwise take his schoolwork
more seriously. And Mak Rahmah avoids going to her sister's house
(next door to her own) during mealtimes, for fear that her sister might
harm her through ilmu. A few houses away lives one Haji Alias, who is
held to utilize ilmu to get people to lend him money. He is believed
to be very successful in this, for people have lent him tremendous
amounts of money over the years, as evidenced by his enormous debts
both in the village and in neighboring communities. One of the reasons
Haji Alias is always in need of money, I was told, is that his wife keeps a
tight rein on the family pursestrings, to the point of accompanying
Haji Alias to the post office whenever his pension is due. Not surpris-
ingly, she is said to use ilmu on him to help make sure that she main-
tains control over his pension and any other money he may come into.
In an important sense it is this broad distribution of ilmu that is the
source of its greatest danger. Villagers assume that virtually all Malays
are quick to sense slight, envy, and so on, and to take offense easily and
thus be tempted to deploy ilmu to help them overcome, assuage, or
vent, their negative feelings or otherwise deal with the situations that
have upset them. In such circumstances the utilization of ilmu may
entail little more than the recitation of one or another chant or incanta-
tion obtained from the Koran, another religious text, aritualspecialist,
or even a nonspecialist who is believed to be knowledgeable in ilmu.
Particularly when recited or blown over the targeted individual's food
or drink, this can cause serious, even fetal, harm. Here (and in other
contexts mentioned earlier) knowledge is clearly power, power to influ-
162 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

ence other people and to maintain one's autonomy in the face of

countervailing forces invoked and manipulated by others who aim to
limit it.
Much of what I have described here is predicated on an unques-
tioned belief in the mystical power of the Word, especially the Word of
God. This belief permeates the life of the village and is realized in myr-
iad contexts. I will mention but a few of them. Villagers recite bismillab
irahman imhim ("in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merci-
ful") whenever they feel themselves in danger or are simply initiating
an activity such as bathing, dressing, eating or drinking, or smoking a
cigarette. Similarly, villagers use amulets and talismans {tangkat) that
frequently comprise bits of paper or cloth inscribed with passages from
the Koran or other Islamic texts. Villagers also place Koranic passages in
strategic locations in their homes, such as atop central posts and over
threshholds, to help ensure their health and well-being.
Firsthand familiarity with the Koran is held to be essential, and chil-
dren begin lessons in its proper recitation at about the same time they
begin their secular education at the government school (when they are
about six or seven years old). The lessons occur at the village mosque
and are overseen by the village imam, though instruction in Koranic
recitation occurs in private homes as well, on an informal basis. Chil-
dren are expected to attend Koranic recitation classes for a number of
years, ideally until they have mastered the entire text. The notion of
mastering merits brief comment, for what is involved is learning how to
recite the text, not how to actually read it. The Koran is available
locally primarily in Arabic, which villagers do not speak, read, or
understand. Malay translations of the Koran can be found in large cit-
ies, but villagers are extremely reluctant to acquire or use a Malay trans-
lation of the Koran, for they might possibly misunderstand the text,
the Word of God; this could lead to grave sin and danger.
Since no one in the village reads Arabic, there is room for wide inter-
pretation as to what the Koran actually says; there are, at the same
time, many shared understandings of its scope, message, and contents.
It is universally assumed, for instance, that the Koran provides devout
followers with knowledge and wisdom that far surpasses what is neces-
sary for their daily lives and basic questions of social conduct and exis-
tence, and that it has predictive power and foretells both modern scien-
tific and technological achievements, and political developments as well
(for example, that "just peoples" will ultimately conquer and prevail
over the "unjust").
Although villagers are confident that the Koran is the ultimate source
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 163

of all knowledge and power, they recognize that there are certain
bodies of esoteric knowledge accessible to non-Muslims which are
extremely powerful and can do them (villagers) serious, even fatal,
harm. The ilmu of the largely disenfranchised non-Muslim aborigines
(ivmngasli), who are frequently portrayed as uncultured and subhuman,
is held to be especially dangerous because it draws upon and allows the
orang asli to exploit fully their knowledge of the pharmacological prop-
erties of the flora and fauna in their forest environment; making mat-
ters worse is the orangaslFs much touted willingness (for a small fee or
other compensation) to utilize such knowledge to help Malays poison
and sorcerize their rivals and enemies.
Villagers' views on non-Muslim aborigines provide significant in-
sights into implicit notions of marginality, danger, and power. The
orang asli are thoroughly marginalized in the contemporary world,
partly as a result of the historic expansion of Malays into oratig asli terri-
tories both in lowland areas and in low-lying upland regions. Local
fears and anxieties concerning the ilmu, sorcery, and general ill will of
the aborigines testify to the potency of the '' marginality/power/dan-
ger" and "bush/power/sorcery" metaphors that continue to animate
various domains of Malay culture (see Endicott 1970; and below), and
domains of many other cultures as well (see Douglas 1966; Zelenietz
1981:12-13; Zelenietz and Lindenbaum 1981; and Forth, Chapter 6).

Illness and Other Personal Misfortune

Many forms of illness and other misfortune are attributed to spir-
its or the mystical agency or malice of fellow human beings. Experienc-
ing dizziness or disorientation (or getting lost) in the forest, losing
money or other personal possessions (through theft or otherwise),
developing one or another illness, dying (or having a child die)—all
these can be the work of spirits or humans (or both), although God is
of course ultimately responsible for determining one's fate (nasib).
Interestingly, although villagers have an extensive, richly textured
demonological system (composed of a panoply of ghosts, demons,
goblins, fairies, elves, weretigers, etc.), they talk mainly—and are clearly
most afraid—of the spirits that are tamed and controlled by humans.
When it comes to specific instances of illness and misfortune, how-
ever, there is not usually much speculation concerning the origins or
master of the spirit, the motivation for the attack, or related questions
of the sort highlighted in Evans-Pritchard's (1937) classic study of
witchcraft among the Azande, such as Why is this particular individual
164 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

afflicted? Why this particular illness or misfortune? Why now? In this

respect—and with regard to the development of exegetical traditions
more generally—villagers in Bogang have much in common with the
Minangkabau of Sumatra, as described by Errington (1984), and
diverge sharply from some other groups in Southeast Asia, such as
the Javanese, as portrayed by Geertz (1960) and others. Errington
(1984:93-94 et passim) reports that Minangkabau interpretations of
key elements of their culture and social universe are relatively "idiosyn-
cratic" and "unsystematic," in that there is considerable variation and
inconsistency in the content of their explanations, and insofar as there
is relatively little concern with the manifestations and implications of
such variability. This is laigely true of Negeri Sembilan, as well (cf.
Rosaldo 1980:20 et passim). The commonalities between Minangka-
bau and Negeri Sembilan may make good sense in the light of the his-
torical and cultural ties between the two societies, but I emphasize
them nonetheless, especially as societies and cultures that are in many
respects relatively similar may have radically different levels and types of
concern with intellectual coherence, integration, and uniformity (see
Yengoyan 1979). To assume, as is sometimes done (e.g., Anderson
1985), that contrasts of the latter sort necessarily reflect the differential
impact of exogenous "detraditionalizing" forces strikes me as unjusti-
fied, if only because such assumptions implicitly accord more intellec-
tual uniformity and coherence to "traditional" cultures than is war-
ranted (see Douglas 1970; Rosaldo 1980; andDentan 1988).7
I have presented some case material on illness and misfortune else-
where (Peletz 1988a), which is much like what has been reported for
Kelantan (Raybeck 1974; Kessler 1977), Trengganu (Laderman 1983),
and other parts of the Malay Peninsula. My main concern here will be
to discuss two additional cases of illness and misfortune, along with the
different interpretations of them that I encountered in Bogang.

Case 1: Mak Shamsiah

Mak Shamsiah was born in Bogang around 1935. The youngest of six
children, she is a member of one of the village's gentry clans
(Lelahmaharaja). She enjoys the additional benefit of being a member
of the clan's wealthiest and most prestigious and powerful lineage. In
1952, when Mak Shamsiah was about seventeen years old, she mar-
ried a cross-cousin from a neighboring village (Pakcik Hamid), who
was chosen for her by her relatives. Pakcik Hamid worked as a police-
man in the predominantly Chinese city of Singapore, and shortly
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 165

after the marriage Mak Shamsiah joined him there, where they took
up residence in the local police barracks. In the years that followed
her move to Singapore, Mak Shamsiah gave birth to six children, one
of whom was terribly deformed and died shortly after being born.
She also became quite ill. By her own account, the onset of her illness
dates from shortly after her move to Singapore, though before she
had any children, hence around 1953. This was before her husband
settled down to the idea of marriage and stopped staying out late at
night. He had been very handsome as a young man ("dark and good-
looking, like a Hindustani"), and he had a roving eye; before their
marriage, moreover, he had seriously considered marrying a Chinese
woman (the plan was foiled by the latter's family, who refused to
countenance the idea of her converting to Islam). In any event, dur-
ing my first period of research from 1978 to 1980, Mak Shamsiah was
still debilitated, though living back in Bogang with her husband and
children. In 1987 she seemed much better, but she continued to
experience bouts of severe illness.
Mak Shamsiah's illness and misfortune have manifested themselves
in various ways: the previously noted birth and subsequent death of a
deformed child; a lack of interest in caring for one of her other chil-
dren when it was born; her refusal to greet people and perform basic
chores and responsibilities seen as central to her role as a married
woman (such as cooking rice and washing clothes); and her dancing
at night by herself. During the first period of fieldwork, Mak Sham-
siah spent much of the time sleeping, and her husband and mother
took over many of her chores. When she did appear outside the
house, she seemed extremely disoriented and depressed.
The first and seemingly most widespread account of Mak Sham-
siah's problems—the "official" household and lineage version—refers
back to the time when she and her husband were living in Singapore.
One day while Mak Shamsiah's husband was away at work, a Malay
dukun from Negeri Sembilan whom Mak Shamsiah or her husband
had sought out on a previous occasion came to the house and pro-
claimed his romantic interest in her. Mak Shamsiah reportedly
attacked him with a broom and/or slammed the door in his face. The
amorous dukun was deeply incensed by this rejection, and he cast a
spell on her that affects her to this day; whenever he thinks of her,
for example, she thinks of him; she also hears voices (including
the dukun's?) that tell her to dance, not to cook rice and work, and
so on.
The second explanation of Mak Shamsiah's personal misfortune
 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

comes from Mak Rahmah, a relatively wealthy cousin (her mother's

mother's sister's daughter's daughter) who belongs to Mak Sham-
siah's "lineage branch" (pcmgkal) and is also one of her immediate
neighbors. Although Mak Rahmah knows and apparently believes
the story of Mak Shamsiah's encounter with the amorous dukun, she
also holds that her illness is at least partly a result of Mak Shamsiah's
throwing her trash over her fence into the vacant lot next door. This
disturbs and insults the spirits (jinn) residing there, and they have
taken their vengeance on her either by bringing about her illness in
the first place or by prolonging it. Mak Rahmah also contends that
Mak Shamsiah has not gotten better because she doesn't pray much,
though she realizes that she doesn't pray much because she is sick.
The third interpretation of Mak Shamsiah's illness comes from
Mak Zaini, a relatively poor clan sister who lives on the other side of
the village and belongs to a lineage with which Mak Shamsiah's lin-
eage has been at odds for quite some time. Mak Zaini's interpretation
focuses on a grave offense against "ancestral property" (harta pesaka)
and the traditions of the ancestors that was committed, she says, by
Mak Shamsiah's mother's brother, Datuk Abdul Ghani. The offense
involved a gold keris and other gold jewelry that one of Mak Zaini's
relatives had asked Datuk Abdul Ghani to store in his house for safe-
keeping. Mak Zaini's ancestors owned this ancestral property, but
they were poor and lived in a dilapidated, bamboo-slat house, and
they thought it wise to have someone else keep it for them. So they
gave it to Datuk Abdul Ghani. Datuk Abdul Ghani's crime is that he
later turned around and sold the property, and kept the proceeds.
Those who sell ancestral property are likely to become gila (crazy,
insane) and may even die. It is thus "natural," "to be expected,"
Mak Zaini told me in 1980, that Mak Shamsiah cannot get out of
bed, sleeps much of the day, and is otherwise unable to function. If
Datuk Abdul Ghani escaped unharmed or somehow avoided the
repercussions of his actions, his children and other descendants
would surely suffer one way or the other.
The fourth explanation of Mak Shamsiah's problems comes from
her son, Kadir, who works and lives in the largely Chinese city of
Kuala Lumpur, where he has spent most of his time since leaving
school. Kadir and I spoke about his mother in 1979, when Kadir was
about nineteen years old. Kadir does not accept the conventional
wisdom concerning his mother's disorders. He feels that his mother
is simply an extremely anxious person; she worries too much and is
depressed about her children, and she fears they will consort with
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 167

drug addicts and other types of "bad people" (omngjehat) in the city.
She probably worries that he has a girlfriend, Kadir added, and that
the girlfriend is not the "right type." (On this count some of her anx-
ieties seem well-grounded, for Kadir does have a girlfriend, and she is
half-Indian and half-Chinese.) Putting his comments in a larger con-
text, Kadir went on to say that he doesn't believe in ghosts and spir-
its, and that he views the village's sacred shrines (keramat) and the
various rituals associated with them—along with ritual feasts at the
graveyard—as against the teachings of Islam.
These are the four different interpretations of Mak Shamsiah's ill-
ness that I encountered in Bogang. Despite the obvious contrasts in
these accounts (about which more in a moment) there are underlying
structural similarities. All four accounts interpret Mak Shamsiah's
misfortune both relationally (in terms of her social relations with oth-
ers) and in a moral framework. These generalizations hold even for
Kadir's explanation of his mother's illness, which focuses on her anxi-
ety concerning her children, the urban, primarily non-Malay, social
fields in which they find themselves, and their prospective spouses
and mates. In addition, all four accounts speak to social relations that
are strained, alienated, or otherwise disordered, and fraught with
ambivalent and/or contradictory sentiments and behavior (e.g., the
suitor who turns on and harms the object of his affection, the nor-
mally quiescent spirit who attacks). Other similarities include: actual
or potential breakdown or failure in reciprocity, reproduction, or
both; and loss of autonomy and social control due to the actions of
people (suitors, relatives, and others) or spirits (or both) who (mis)-
appropriate power for their own individualistic and otherwise socially
divisive ends.
Contrasting features of the four interpretations include, most
obviously, the types of relationships held to be at the heart of the
problem—which involve suitors, spirits, clansmen, and children,
respectively—; and the types of emotions assumed to have engen-
dered Mak Shamsiah's illness—unrequited love, feelings of rejection,
loss of face; proprietary anger and betrayal (on the part of local spirits
and clansmen alike); and parental anxiety, respectively. Other con-
trasts involve the issue of mystical agency. In the first account, mysti-
cal agency manipulated through the iltnu of a rejected suitor is
responsible for Mak Shamsiah's afflictions. In the second account,
mystical agency is realized in the actions of spirits, who are held to be
at least partly responsible for these afflictions. The third account
makes reference to mystical agency as well, but does not specify the
168 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

medium or channel through which this agency comes into play. And
in the fourth account there is no reference to mystical agency.
The last account, it will be recalled, comes from Mak Shamsiah's
son, Kadir, who works and lives in Kuala Lumpur and is in many
ways for less "traditional" than the majority of Bogang's full-time
residents. We could perhaps generalize here and conclude that
Kadir's disinclination to invoke mystical agency and any type of
human malevolence in his explanation of his mother's illness reflects
the experiences and perspectives of Malays in urban areas, and of
"modern" Malays in general. There are no solid grounds for this
conclusion, however, even though some of Kadir's experiences and
comments obviously resonate with the more cosmopolitan orienta-
tions found among many urban Malays. In fact, as Provencher
(1979:48) discovered, on the basis of his research among Malays in
the Kuala Lumpur area, "most urban Malays who become ill suspect
that they have been poisoned"; and, more importantly, "the fear of
[poisoning and] sorcery is greater . . . in urban communities than in
rural villages" (emphasis added).

Case 2: Bashid
Rashid was born in Bogang around 1957. He is a member of the
same clan and lineage as Mak Shamsiah, and is her sister's son.
Rashid's household is without question the wealthiest household in
the village. This is largely because of the business successes of his late
father, Haji Yahya, who died in December 1986.
The first time I saw Rashid during my second period of research
was when I encountered him at the local provision shop (kedai) that
his mother runs. I expected the worst from the stories I had heard
but still was not prepared for what I saw. Rashid was lying on a chaise
longue that had been covered with a blanket and was propped up
behind one of the tables in the kedai. His head appeared freakishly
large as the rest of his body was emaciated and withered. He looked
all skin and bones, and his feet were covered with flaking skin and a
red substance that I initially mistook for blood (it turned out to be
medicine). Rashid greeted me by exclaiming that I looked well and
fat, and that he was sick and thin. He had been very ill, he added,
and could not walk, which is why his legs had withered; this was his
fate (nasib). He said that he is much better now and not nearly as thin
as before; at least now he has an appetite and can sleep, and has feel-
ing in his legs.
Persomi Misfortune in a Malay Context 169

The first interpretation of Rashid's illness comes from Datuk Ham-

zah, who at eighty-nine, is one of the oldest residents of Bogang.
Datuk Hamzah was sitting at the kedai when I spoke with Rashid,
and he claimed that non-Muslim aborigines (prang asU) were respon-
sible for Rashid's afflictions. Poison (bisa) entered Rashid's body
through his feet, having been spat on the ground by one or more
orangasU. The saliva of orangasU is poisonous, and any area spat upon
by them will become poisonous, even if the spit has long since dried
up. Rashid works with the family's lumber firm and is always going
into the forest; he might have stepped on areas, long since over-
grown, that had once been spat upon by orangasU. This type of work
carries certain dangers.
The second explanation of Rashid's misfortune comes from Rashid
himself and was recounted as we sat at the kedai. The sickness began
about a month after his father died, while Rashid was living on the
east coast of the Peninsula, working for the family's lumber com-
pany. Someone made him ill, and it was intentional. It was one of his
business friends or associates, someone he works with, though he
doesn't know for sure which one. He attributed it to envy (dertgki)
but did not elaborate on any of these points.
These two accounts of Rashid's disorders bear certain similarities,
but they also diverge in important respects. The similarities include
both the relational interpretations of Rashid's illness and the belief
that Rashid's problems stem ultimately from human malevolence
triggered by his violation of unspoken codes of propriety (concerning
the integrity of territorial domains, and relative equality, respec-
tively). The contrasts are in some ways more significant. One contrast
turns on the nature of the agency believed to have caused Rashid's ill-
ness: Datuk Hamzah's interpretation refers to mystical agency con-
trolled by non-Muslim aborigines, which is automatically activated
once a taboo (pantang) has been violated, and which may cause harm
somewhat indiscriminately; Rashid's interpretation makes no men-
tion of taboo but refers simply to human envy and malevolence,
which were focused on him and intentionally caused him harm.
Another salient contrast involves the source and meaning of danger
and the context in which it occurred. In Datuk Hamzah's account,
the source of danger is the forest and the non-Muslim aborigines
who reside there and have long controlled its resources, power, and
secrets; the context of danger is also the forest (or an area once
cleared that has long since been overgrown). In Rashid's account, on
the other hand, the danger emanates from his business friends and
170 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

associates, their social relations with him, and the envy that suffuses
these relations owing (presumably) to Rashid's relative economic suc-
cess. The context of danger, in turn, is the lumber industry and the
highly competitive, largely non-Malay, world of modern capitalist
business and trade relations, Rashid's involvement in which enabled
him to live exceedingly well for a while but also nearly cost him
his life.

Conclusion
Bogang's dukun and their healing rituals testify to the prevalence—
and are in fact the embodiment—of the ambivalence, alienation, and
tension that exist in local society and culture and in other Malay com-
munities in Malaysia. The ambivalence, alienation, and tension to
which I refer emerge clearly from the comments of dukun such as Mak
Ijah, who insists that she was sorcerized by her adopted daughter, and
who (along with her husband) has decidely negative views of human
nature and local social relations. These sentiments surface in other con-
texts, as well: for example, Pak Ibrahim's disparaging remarks about
other dukun and his strained relationship with the local Islamic man of
learning; villager's views of Datuk LatifF; and, finally, the amorous
dukun in Singapore who is widely believed to be responsible for the ill-
ness and misfortune that have plagued Mak Shamsiah for more than
thirty years.
These ambivalences are but one manifestation and condensed
expression of the more general and diffuse ambivalence with which vil-
lagers view and approach all social relations, including—indeed, espe-
cially—those with neighbors and kin. Most relationships in the com-
munity are cast in idioms of kinship, which continue to have heavy
moral and economic entailments; and even when they are not, they
come with potentially burdensome moral obligations. The expecta-
tions associated with these obligations can be extremely difficult to ful-
fill; and in many cases, even when they are fulfilled, they are not recip-
rocated. Further aggravating problems such as these is the villagers'
heavy reliance on cash cropping, and their incorporation into the
world-market economy more generally, which have resulted not only
in the erosion and demise of many traditional, reciprocity-based rela-
tions of production and proprietorship, but also in the proliferation of
individualistic behavior, non-redistributive institutions, and various
forms of inequality and socioeconomic stratification. These and other
changes have created new—and have intensified preexisting—uncertain-
Persomi Misfortune in a Malay Context 171

ties and dangers in villages like Bogang and have certainly contributed
to a situation in which most relationships in the community are condu-
cive to the realization of ambivalence.
This ambivalence is fueled by villagers' suspicions that fellow Malays
are frequently motivated by greed, envy, and malice, and are forever
trying to get the better of one another through displays of status and
prestige, and by attempting to gain control over one anothers'
resources, loyalties, and affections. These suspicions are not expressed
openly, however; nor are personal desires and individual intentions (cf.
Weiner 1976:213; Dentan 1988:859, 869). The formal rules of social
interaction prohibit such behavior, just as they proscribe many forms of
direct speech that could possibly enable people to read better what is
on the minds of others. Villagers are quick to point out that one's inner
spirit or soul (batin, roh) is invisible, concealed beneath the physical
body (badan), and that one's real intentions, motivations, likes, and
dislikes are similarly shielded from view and typically unknown. Out-
ward behavior is no indication of what is going on in someone's mind
or "in one's liver" (dalam hati), for outward behavior is not only con-
strained by generally restricted speech codes, in which most utterances
are "pressed into service to affirm the social order" (Douglas 1970:22);
it also intentionally disguises inner realities. These themes are high-
lighted in myriad local expressions, such as ya mojjun, which refers to a
"yes" that really means "no"; janji Melayu ("a Malay promise"),
which is sometimes used to convey similar meaning; cakap manis, topi
hati lain, which can be translated as "sweet words or talk, but a differ-
ent (not-so-sweet) liver"; and mulut manis, tapi hati busuk, which refers
to "sweet mouth but a stinking, rotten liver."
This is both the ideal climate for ilmu and where ilmu comes into the
picture, for villagers assume that many people in their social universe
rely on ilmu to achieve what they are prevented by the formal rules of
social interaction from accomplishing (or even setting out to accom-
plish). These and attendant assumptions help to explain why the insti-
tution of dukun continues to flourish despite the decline of traditional
midwifery, shamanism, and spirit cults. In sum, although certain dukun
are suspected of trafficking in evil spirits, engaging in sorcery, and oth-
erwise misappropriating the power of the Word, and although the
entire institution has come under increasingly heavy fire from Islamic
resurgents (the dakwah movement) and critics of disparate persuasion,
dukun are still very much needed to protect villagers (and their urban
counterparts) from the dangers in their social universe, including, in
particular, the veiled aggression of fellow Malays.
172 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

Fellow Malays are not the only source of uncertainty and danger,
however. We have seen that non-Muslim aborigines are perceived to be
extremely threatening; so, too, are various types of spirits in the
demonological system, only some of which are controlled by human
agency. In this connection we might consider "epidemics" of spirit
possession among young Malay women (including women from Negeri
Sembilan) working in factories in Selangor, Melaka, Singapore, and
elsewhere. Ong (1988) reports that such cases commonly involve spirits
that are "wild" or "untamed" (as opposed to "domesticated" or
"tamed" by human masters). Ong (1988:32 et passim) suggests in
addition that epidemics of spirit possession among female factory work-
ers, and "the intensified social and bodily vigilance" with which they
are associated, reflect heightened concerns and anxieties about the
Malay social order, the dangers of stepping outside it, and the more
encompassing body politic. The contexts in which these epidemics
occur—the shop floors of modern factories, especially multinationals in
"free-trade zones"—provide evidence of incipient shifts in, and new
sources of, marginality, uncertainty, danger, and power. More gener-
ally, such cases (along with material presented earlier) indicate that
Malays see themselves as threatened, if not marginalized and victim-
ized, not only by their own neighbors and kin, but also by largely
Western-oriented state policies and institutions, and by the state-spon-
sored nexus of capitalism introduced during the British colonial period
(1874-1957), which continues to undermine and otherwise transform
rural culture and social relations (cf. Taussig 1980; Zelenietz and Lin-
denbaum 1981). Evidence of these same shifts appears in the data from
Bogang, even though most dangers and tensions still have a decidedly
local face; for example, Rashid attributing his illness to the envy and
sorcery of a "business friend" from the east coast whom he encoun-
tered in the course of his work for a modern capitalist enterprise (as
opposed to the sorcery of forest-dwelling, non-Muslim, aborigines);
and Kadir's account of his mother's illness, which focuses on her anxi-
ety concerning her children mixing with, and perhaps mating with and
marrying, the "wrong types" in the predominantly Chinese city of
Kuala Lumpur (as opposed to sorcery, spirits, or other mystical
agency). On a broader note, cases of the sort discussed here indicate
that processes involving the disenchantment of the world, which
Weber analyzed so incisively at times, are far less uniform, linear, and
mechanical than is widely assumed.8
Finally, a point of irony: the very same historical forces which have
exacerbated rural and urban Malays' fears and anxieties concerning poi-
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 173

soning, sorcery, and spirit possession—and which have thus ensured the
continued demand for certain services of dukun^-have also rendered
superfluous many of the traditional services once provided by dukun
(dealing with fractured and broken bones, other simple physical com-
plaints) and have, at the same time, helped to undermine the legiti-
macy of the institution in its entirety. I noted earlier that most of
Bogang's dukun are in their sixties or seventies, and that (to the best of
my knowledge) there are no young people in the village or outside of it
who have expressed strong interest in learning their ilmu and replacing
them when they retire or die. These and other forms of local knowl-
edge and power obtained through illness, dreams, chanting, trancing,
and possession by spirits may thus be lost forever, despite the locally
experienced and culturally elaborated need for their deployment. Such
a loss may well engender feelings of disempowerment throughout
Malay culture, even among those who (like Kadir) appear to put rela-
tively little stock in ilmu and mystical agency and have yet to experience
serious illness or other personal misfortune.

Notes and References

This chapter is based on fieldwork conducted in Negeri Sembilan from
1978 to 1980, and 1987 to 1988. The first period of research was funded by
the National Science Foundation, the Center for South and Southeast Asian
Studies of the University of Michigan, and the University of Michigan's
Horace Rackham School of Graduate Studies; the second was funded by the
Fulbright Research Program, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropologi-
cal Research, and the Picker Foundation at Colgate University. I am indebted
to Ellen Peletz, who provided much appreciated support during all phases of
the projects, and to the inhabitants of the village hereafter referred to as
Bogang (a pseudonym). Salvatore Cucchiari, Robert Hefner, and Ellen Peletz
provided critical commentary on an earlier draft, as did members of the Canter-
bury Symposium. Special thanks are extended to the organizers of the sympo-
sium, Roy F. Ellen and C. W. Watson, for their detailed comments on the first
draft. Some of the material presented here appears in an earlier publication
(Peletz 1988a).
1. The Malay concept of ilmu is broadly related to concepts of the same
name elsewhere in the Malay-Indonesian world, such as the Javanese ilmu/
ngelmu (see also Bowen, Watson, Chapters 10, 11). For thought-provoking—
and contrasting—approaches to the study of Javanese ilmu, see Geertz (1960)
and Keeler (1987:81-84, 250-253, et passim), whose perspectives are largely
psychocultural, and Hefner (1985:144-145,189-191, et passim), whose per-
spective reflects a greater concern with the political economy of knowledge.
The account presented here may be seen as an attempt to bridge these contrast-
ing approaches.
174 MICHAEL G . PELETZ

2. There is regional and other variation in the Peninsula regarding the use of
terms like dukun and pawaryj, and in some cases the two terms are used inter-
changeably (Endicott 1970:13-14; Mohd. Taib bin Osman 1972:226 et pas-
sim). In contemporary Negeri Sembilan, however, the semantic referents of
the two terms are usually fairly separate and distinct. My use of such terms in
this chapter is generally consistent with that of villagers in Negeri Sembilan, the
principal exception being that I do not use common synonyms for dukun, such
as bomoh.
3. Bogang's last, and for many years inactive, pawang suffered from diabetes,
whose complications resulted in one of his legs becoming gangrenous and hav-
ing to be amputated. This situation is congruent with the culturally explicit
theme that the bodily defects or sickness of a ruler reflect problems in the rela-
tionship between the ruler and his realm, for instance, the ruler's Mure to
mediate between the microcosm and the macrocosm, or otherwise to protect
his subjects. This is a common motif in the political myths of Malays, Javanese,
and other Southeast Asians (Anderson 1972; Jordaan and de Josselin de Jong
1985). The more general theme—that sickness is frequently attributed to dis-
turbed, problematic, or alienated social relationships—runs throughout the
material presented in the text (below).
4. It is beyond the scope of the present discussion to attempt an explanation
of this phenomenon (or to delineate the various factors that account for the
apparent concentration of poisoning cases among adolescent and adult males).
Kessler (1977), who builds on the work of I. M. Lewis (1971), considers some
of the relevant issues, as does Ong (1988). Lambek's (1981:59-69 et passim;
1988:725-726) analysis of spirit possession among the Malagasy speakers of
Mayotte (Comoro Islands) provides a sophisticated critique of Lewis' position,
and is quite apposite to Negeri Sembilan and other parts of the Malay Penin-
sula.
5. The fact that Pak Daud's chants are unintelligible to everyone but himself
also poses problems for key features of Lévi-Strauss' (1963b) analysis of abreac-
tion and shamanism, which rests on his (mis)understanding of a Cuna Indian
shaman's treatment of the pains experienced by a pregnant woman. While I
believe that abreaction is a central feature of the healing rituals that Pak Daud
and other healers perform, I do not accept Lévi-Strauss' argument that healers
necessarily provide their patients with a (verbal) language to express that which
is otherwise inexpressible. In the Bogang case, as mentioned in the text,
patients usually diagnose their illnesses (frequently in conversations with close
kin) before they seek out the services of Pak Daud (or another dukun). This is to
say that they usually possess the language through which to express and render
meaningful their pains and other alarming physical sensations before they inter-
act with Pak Daud in the healing ritual or in any other context. It is true of
course that Pak Daud's diagnosis and treatment usually entail ritual validation
of the patient's self-diagnosis, and thus vest it with a broader legitimacy and
simultaneously help reconstitute and invigorate the patient's notions of self,
social life, and the cosmos; the point, however, is that Pak Daud does not usu-
ally provide the (verbal) language in question. Peletz (1988a) provides additional
material on these issues; see also Laderman (1983:145-147). For further dis-
cussion of such matters in the context of an analysis of ritual among the Teng-
Personal Misfortune in a Malay Context 175

ger (East Java), see Heftier (1985); see also Atkinson's (1987) work on sha-
manism among the Wana (Sulawesi), and the earlier critique of Lévi-Strauss by
Neu (1975).
6. The significance of these idioms was brought home to me by Kessler's
(1977) insightful analysis of spirit possession in Kelantan (see also Douglas
1966,1970).
7. Space limitations do not permit an elaboration of all the theoretical or
methodological implications of the points raised in this section of the essay.
Hobart (1986) and Wikan (1987) address some of the relevant issues in the
context of studies dealing with Bali. For further discussion concerning the
reproduction, control, distribution, and deeply perspectival nature of cultural
knowledge—and the political economy of contested symbols of meanings—see
Bloch (1989), Bourdieu (1977), Eickelman (1978), Hefner (1985), Keesing
(1987), Peletz (1993), Rosaldo (1980), and Scott (1985).
8. This theme is addressed in greater detail elsewhere (Peletz 1993).

Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. 1972. The idea of power in Javanese culture. In

Culture and politics in Indonesia, ed. Claire Holt, 1-69. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor-
nell University Press.
. 1985. Review of Frederick Errington, Manners and meaning in West
Sumatra: The social context of consciousness. In Journal of Asian Studies 45(1):
192-194.
Atkinson, Jane Monnig. 1987. The effectiveness of shamans in an Indonesian
ritual. American Anthropologist 89(2) : 342-355.
Bloch, Maurice. 1989. Situai history and power: Selected papers in anthropology.
London: Athlone Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a theory ofpractice. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Burridge, Kenelm. 1957. Managerial influences in a Johore village. Journal of
the Malayan Branch ofthe Royal Asiatic Society 30(1) : 93-114.
Dentan, Robert Knox. 1988. Ambiguity, synecdoche and affect in Semai med-
icine. Social Science and Medicine 27(8): 857-877.
Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and danger: An analysis ofthe concepts of pollution and
taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
. 1970 (1982). Natural symbols: Explorations in cosmology. New York: Pan-
theon.
Eickelman, Dale. 1978. The art of memory: Islamic education and its social
reproduction. Comparative Studies in Society and History 20(4) : 485-516.
Endicott, K. M. 1970. An analysis ofMalay magic. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Errington, Frederick. 1984. Manners and meaning in West Sumatra: The social
context ofconsciousness. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1937. Witchcraft, oracles and magic among the Azande.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Geertz, Clifford. 1960. The religion of Java. Glencoe, 111. : Basic Books.
Golomb, Louis. 1988. The interplay of traditional therapies in South Thai-
land. Social Science and Medicine 27(8): 761-768.
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Vol. 2: General Report of the Population Census. Kuala Lumpur: Depart-

ment of Statistics.
Hefner, Robert W. 1985. Hindu Japanese: Tertgger tradition and Islam. Prince-
ton, N.J. : Princeton University Press.
Hobart, Mark. 1986. Thinker, thespian, soldier, slave? Assumptions about
human nature in the study of Balinese society. In Context, meaning, and
power in Southeast Asia, ed. Mark Hobart and Robert Taylor, 131-156.
Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program.
Jordaan, R. E., and P. E. de Josselin de Jong. 1985. Sickness as a metaphor in
Indonesian political myths. Bijdragen tot de TaaU, Land-, en Volkenkunde
141(2): 253-274.
Keeler, Ward. 1987. Javanese shadow plays, Javanese sebes. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press.
Keesing, Roger. 1987. Knowledge as interpretive quest. Current Anthropology
28(2): 161-169.
Kessler, Clive S. 1977. Conflict and sovereignty in Kelantanese Malay spirit
seances. In Case studies in spirit possession, ed. V. Crapanzano and V. Garri-
son, 295-331. New York: Wiley and Sons.
Laderman, Carol. 1983. Wives and midwives: Childbirth and nutrition in rural
Malaysia. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Laderman, Carol, and Penny Van Esterik. 1988. Introduction: Techniques of
healing in Southeast Asia. Social Science and Medicine (special issue on Tech-
niques of Healing in Southeast Asia) 27(8): 747-750.
Lambek, Michael. 1981. Human spirits: A cultural account of trance in Mayotte.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. 1988. Spirit possession/spirit succession: Aspects of social continuity
among Malagasy speakers in Mayotte. American Ethnologist 15(4): 710-
731.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1963a. The sorcerer and his magic. In Structural anthro-
pology, 161-180. New York: Basic Books.
. 1963b. The effectiveness of symbols. In Structural anthropology, 181-
201. New York: Basic Books.
Lewis, I. M. 1971. Ecstatic religion: An anthropological study ofspirit possession and
shamanism. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
McAllister, Carol. 1987. Matriliny, Islam, and capitalism: Combined and
uneven development in the lives of Negeri Sembilan women. Ph.D. diss.,
University of Pittsburgh.
Mohd. Taib bin Osman. 1972. Patterns of supernatural premises underlying
the institution of the bomoh in Malay culture. Bijdragen tot de Taal-,
Land-, en Volkenkunde 128:219-224.
Neu, Jerome. 1975. Lévi-Strauss on shamanism. Man 10(2): 285-292.
Obeyesekere, Gananath. 1969. The ritual drama of the Sanni demons: Collec-
tive representations of disease in Ceylon. Comparative Studies in Society and
History 11(2): 174-216.
Ong, Aihwa. 1988. The production of possession: Spirits and the multina-
tional corporation in Malaysia. American Ethnologist 15(1) : 28-42.
Peletz, Michael G. 1988a. Poisoning, sorcery, and healing rituals in Negeri
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. 1988b. A share of the harvest: Kinship, property, and social history among
the Malays of Bembau. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
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. 1993. Sacred texts and dangerous words: The politics of law and cul-
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in Melanesia (special issue of Social Analysis 8).
 10
Return to Sender: A Muslim
Discourse of Sorcery in a
Relatively Egalitarian Society,
the Gayo of Northern Sumatra

JOHN R. BOWEN

I EXPLORE HERE the Islamic content and the political implications

of the discourse of sorcery in Gayo society. The Gayo are a Muslim peo-
ple of about two hundred thousand who live in the highlands of Aceh
Province in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. Their particular way of prac-
ticing and discussing sorcery and the healing that is its counterpart may
be unique in Southeast Asia. Gayo healers, drawing on Islamic sources
of knowledge and power, exorcise harmful spirits and return them to
their senders, thereby combining healing and retribution in a single act.
All such actions are guardedly private and have remained outside both
traditional and contemporary Indonesian legal procedures. I argue that
the Gayo have shaped an Islamic discourse about misfortune to a rela-
tively egalitarian sociopolitical system in which public confrontations
have been studiously avoided. The resultant procedures and discourses
of magic have combined, first, private identification of sorcerers within
the community and, second, public identification of illness-causing
spirits outside the community.1

Sociopolitical Frameworks for Sorcery

Before the entry of the Dutch into the Gayo highlands in 1904,
Gayo politics most often consisted of formalized interactions among
village-level political units called sarak opat (lit. "four sides"). The
authority of the village head (reje) was limited largely to mediating
disputes among villagers and representing the village in marriage
exchanges or intervillage dispute resolution sessions (generally regard-

179
180 JOHN R . BOWEN

ing sexual behavior or thé infringement of territorial or water rights).

The formal, public portion of these encounters emphasized the agree-
ment of all parties and moved the interaction toward a resolution.
Arguments, negotiations, and the actual presentation of facts occurred
offstage. Although disputes could be taken to the higher authority of
the domain lord (kejurun) for arbitration, most appear to have been set-
tled through public exchanges and private negotiations (see Bowen
1989).
Gayo public life in the late precolonial period thus highlighted rela-
tions of relative equality among political units, in the absence of effec-
tive central authority structures. Gayo political discourse created a pub-
lic arena in which emotion-laden matters could be resolved without
engendering or escalating conflict. This type of agreement-promoting
public speech may be characteristic of many such relatively egalitarian
political systems (Brenneis and Myers 1984; Rosaldo 1984). Since
1904, Dutch, Japanese, and Indonesian officials (military, police,
judges) have appropriated to themselves the right to settle many dis-
putes, and in the 1980s the precolonial forms of oratory and exchange
were restricted to the rites and relations of marriage.
The remainder of this chapter concerns thefive-villagecommunity
of Isak, located in the central region of the highlands. Before the Dutch
creation of an office of community ruler in the 1920s, Isak politics were
primarily egalitarian and interactive. In addition to therivalriesand for-
mal encounters between villages, two multivillage blocs held compet-
ing claims to community authority and often engaged in open conflict.
Moreover, kin groups within two of the larger villages contested the
right to village-level authority. On two occasions in the colonial period
these conflicts within villages led to permanent village fissions, and
temporaryfissionsalso occurred, most often over the issue of a mar-
riage payment or when an unmarried couple was found in a compro-
mising position. (Control of sexuality and claims to authority fre-
quently were linked.) These events sometimes led to raids by one
village on another and to the erection of fortifications around villages.
By the 1980s these hostilities within Isak had diminished to a great
extent and for a number of reasons, including the rise in importance of
new authorities (religious, colonial, Indonesian) not based in the vil-
lages. But the sense of hostility among certain villages and kinship
groups had persisted, and emerged in nonpolitical ways, among them
therivalryof didong sung poetry teams (Bowen 1989) and the choice of
targets for accusations of sorcery.
Gayo evaluate and shape their public behavior with reference to the
A Muslim Discourse ofSorcery 181

norms of shame or embarrassment (kernel) and having a proper social

sense of self (mukemel). Gayo frequently use these norms to gloss those
in other domains. Thus some Gayo equate religious piety (iman) with
this sense of shame and selfhood, since the person who was mukemel
would ipso facto be pious. Someone with this proper social sense
refrains from loud speech and quick gestures, avoids those in "heavy"
kin relations (father's or mother's brothers), and employs circumspec-
tion in speech. Gayo often use Indonesian terms for such delicate cate-
gories as wife and husband to avoid the associations of sexual inter-
course that are more strongly felt when one's own language is used.
Gayo also virtually never accuse each other of anything in public, nor
have I ever observed a public fight or argument among Gayo in Isak,
except for the arguments carried out into the street by one woman
who, for that behavior, was said to have no sense of shame. Of course,
this general restraint means that much interest is generated by the few
activities that do air hostile feelings, such as public poetic exchanges
and women's ritual wailing prior to a marriage.
Public life thus involves playing up consensus and avoiding accusa-
tion and confrontation. Those who suspect that sorcery is responsible
for their afflictions thus refrain from making public comments to that
effect. Instead, they seek the assistance of a healer (guru) who can exor-
cise the offending spirit and return it to its source, the individual who
had sent it. A healer usually works at his/her own house and in private,
although others such as myself may be allowed to witness the proceed-
ings. Suspicions never lead to public accusations. Nor, based on the
available evidence from just prior to Dutch rule, were accusations of
sorcery made publicly in the precolonial era.2 No one has ever, to my
knowledge, publicly identified him- or herself as having initiated a
harmful act by way of magic, nor did any of the healers with whom I
spoke ever make such an admission. "Sorcery" is something others do.
Healers diagnose an illness by employing one or more of a number of
techniques. They might transfer or caique (seduei) the pattern of afflic-
tion onto another object, often a chicken, and then dissect the object
to discern the location and nature of the affliction. Or they might
address the spirit that is lodged in the patient, trying first one and then
another name until the spirit responds through the voice of the patient
or through a movement or tremor that can be felt by the healer. Heal-
ers also recognize certain signatures of particular spirits.
Most often the healer finds that the illness was caused wholly or in
part by a malevolent spirit sent by someone who wishes to do the
patient harm. (The unintentional harming of a patient also occurs, usu-
182 JOHN & B o WEN

ally by an ancestor who hails a relative as he or she passes by the grave

and thereby, unwittingly, causes the passerby to suffer a stomachache.)
The illnesses that result from the spirit's activities range in their symp-
toms from persistent diarrhea to poor appetite (especially for infants) to
seizures and speaking in the name of the spirit. In some cases the pur-
ported sender was an individual generally known to have wished to
harm the patient. Most notably, several young women were said to
have been possessed by spirits sent by jilted young men.
In order to cure the patient, the healer usually combines the two
techniques of exorcism and medicine. Exorcism involves the use of
spells (doa) and powerful depictive concentration (maripet), which allow
the healer to act direcdy on the spirit.3 The spirit that is harming the
patient is sent back (ibeles) to the original sender through this technique
of "return" (pemulang). Because the effects of the spirit might linger,
or the camp followers {anak buati) of the spirit not heed the exorcism,
medicine (waq) also is used. By "medicine" Gayo mean both the leaves
and roots that form part of the corpus of local knowledge and the med-
icines available at the local clinic (Puskesmas) or from a pharmacist in
the nearby town of Takkngen. All practitioners of exorcism also apply
medicines, but many who have some expertise in the use of medicinal
objects do not exorcise.
Although both men and women use medicines, exorcists generally
are men of middle age. (Women, I should add, predominate in other
domains of practical spiritual expertise, among them the performance
of the seventh-day ritual through which a child is introduced to the
world and protected against harm.) Four men enjoy particular renown
within the community as healers and are appealed to frequently by a
wide range of afflicted persons. I have had extensive discussions with
these four men and with a fifth healer, a neighbor and teacher. Others
in Isak are recognized as competent healers to differing degrees. Fur-
thermore, ancestors, and particularly ancestors who themselves have
been powerful healers in their lifetimes, can be appealed to for assis-
tance through the making of offerings.
Each of the five healers obtained his knowledge (ilmu; Arabic Him) by
requesting it from an older healer, often a close relative (father, wife's
father, mother's father). Three healers derived their knowledge from
one descent line in Kute Robel village, which had produced particularly
powerful healers.
As one might expect, the pattern of sorcery that emerges from heal-
ers' diagnoses reflects the pattern of sociopolitical tensions and cleav-
ages within Isak. Thus in Kute Rayang village healers from the two his-
A Muslim Discourse ofSorcery 183

torically conflicting kinship groups from which the headman and reli-
gious official were chosen tend to assign responsibility for spirit afflic-
tion to each other. Furthermore, the one healer most often held to be
responsible for illness and death had married into the headman's line
from outside Isak. In turn, two healers from the Kute Rayang line
(including the in-married man just mentioned) tend to be blamed by
those from other villages, and in particular by healers connected to the
village of Kute Robel.
The finding that sorcery accusations travel along the social lines of
least resistance (and most tension) is hardly new. What is of interest is
just how the potentially explosive tensions generated by sorcery accusa-
tions are contained in the absence of central authority. The answer to
this question lies partly in the social practice of exorcism and partly in
the moral and cosmological exegeses of that practice within an overall
Islamic theory of knowledge and being.

The Logic of Exorcism

Let us begin with the process of diagnosing and curing followed
by one of the five healers with whom I worked, Abang Kerna from
Kute Kramil village. Abang Kerna described his way of healing as a
combination of powerful depictive concentration {maripet) and the
appropriate manipulation of spells {clod) and ritual objects that act as
tokens (isyamt) of intended effects. As was the case with other healers,
Abang Kerna never admitted to having caused an illness, but he did
boast of having returned spirits to their senders and thereby causing the
sender to fall ill.
Abang Kerna uses a wide variety of techniques to diagnose and cure a
sick person, some of which need not concern us here. In some cases the
active spirit (semangat) of a person has left the body; Abang Kerna then
calls it back by reminding it that it belongs in "Muhammad," using the
name of the prophet to stand for humanity in general. Other illnesses
are due to an imbalance of elements in the patient. Each individual's
body contains equal quantities of medicine (tawar) and poison (tube)',
an imbalance can lead to illness. In such cases Abang Kerna enters into
the person through a process of concentration and imagination and
then calls on the four protective angels to guide him to the person's
heart, liver, lungs, and other organs, and inspect them for damage.
Along with this direct repair work, Abang Kerna also tries to deter-
mine if a spirit is responsible for the illness and, if so, which one. He
calls out the names of the most likely spirits, beginning with Syeh
184 JOHN R . BOWEN

Syamsuddin, a spirit often accused of causing illness and misfortune

and of hindering the initial Islamization of Aceh.4 If the spirit fails to
respond to his name, Abang Kerna threatens him, telling him that God
will be angry if he does not leave the patient. Usually at that point the
spirit responds, either nonverbally, by producing an uneasy sensation
in the healer's stomach or a movement of the patient's arm, or verbally,
by uttering protests and threats through the mouth of the patient. The
healer may or may not also seek to determine who, if anyone, has sent
the spirit. He does so by trying several names and waiting for an affir-
mative sign. As with other divinatory practices that involve responses
to suggestions from the healer (the Zande case comes first to mind),
this method tends to confirm the preexisting suspicions of the healer.
The spirit then is expelled from the patient's body through a two-
step process. First, the healer removes the spirit from the patient's
body and lodges it in another object, usually a small citrus fruit called
the tnungkur. Then he sends the spirit back to its source, with the result
that whoever had sent it will experience discomfort and possibly serious
illness. The healer carries out these steps through his powerful imagina-
tion (trumpet). He imagines that his manipulation of the objects,
including the fruit, that lie in the external (lakir; Arabic zahir) world
has a direct effect on the elements, including the harmful spirit, that
occupy the inner (bating Arabic baton) world. His simultaneous imagi-
nation and action are successful because of the immanence of God, the
ultimately inner (baton) reality, in the outer world. God's power and
justice are the inner and effective cause of the exorcism. The healer's
arm, raised to strike, invokes the inner power of God by virtue of its
representation of God's name (it becomes the initial letter alif of Allah)
and the ability of the healer to imagine it as such. It is the malevolent
acts of the spirit's sender that are sent back to him by way of God's
power. As he strikes the mungkur fruit to send back the spirit, Abang
Kerna proclaims, "It is not I who strike you but rather your own con-
duct that strikes you."
Elsewhere (Bowen 1987) I have argued that Gayo exorcism trans-
formed Sufi ideas of gnosis into a theory of magical efficacy. Images of
God's immanence, disseminated in Aceh by the sixteenth-century poet
Hamzah Fansuri, resemble those employed by Gayo to explain sorcery
and healing. The very speech forms used to describe the inner power
behind actions are identical. Consider Hamzah's translation of a
Koranic verse (8:17) about the power of God behind Muhammad's vic-
tory over his enemies in battle: "It was not you who slew them but
God who slew them." 5
This particular form of historical/magical discourse appears in Malay
A Muslim Discourse ofSorcery 185

magic as well, as in the spell to be uttered over a figure that is buried in

order to render harm to the person it is carved to resemble: "It is not I
who am burying him; it is Jibra'il [the archangel Gabriel] who is bury-
ing him" (Skeat 1967 [1900]: 571).
Gayo exorcism thus appears to be a practical application of Sufi ideas
about knowledge and power. Its distinctiveness within Southeast Asia
lies in its sole focus on powerful imagination and return. The images
and objects that, for Malay or Cebuano practitioners, direct the flow of
harm to the intended victim (Skeat 1967 [1900]; Lieban 1967) are
entirely absent. Specifically harmful objects are not needed by the Gayo
healer, because through his own imaginative power he is able to let
God's justice direct the spirit back to its sender.
The absence of objects has a further consequence: it keeps sorcery
and healing out of the domain of Gayo jurisprudence. Gayo rules for
determining fault depend on material proof. If a person is accused of
stealing or fornication, an incriminating object must be found in his/
her possession or in the victim's abode. In the absence of specifically
harmful objects, no Gayo could or can be convicted of sorcery. When,
for example, in the mid-1980s the (non-Gayo) district public prosecu-
tor attempted to convict a man for sorcery, the case had to be aban-
doned, not because of problems with the legal status of sorcery, but for
lack of material proof. All the objects found in the suspect's home that
could have been used for sorcery also had other, legitimate uses.
Furthermore, because the procedure of returning the spirit to its
source works automatically, the healer need not even know the identity
of the sorcerer. Abang Kerna said he usually did not know to whom he
was returning the spirit, but he did watch to see who in the community
came down with an illness or ailment after an exorcism. Other healers
did attempt to learn the sorcerer's identity as part of their search for the
most effective antidote. Aman Tauhid, for example, begins by identify-
ing the sender. He calls on the power of God to heal, divine, or, if nec-
essary, cause to fall ill (a procedure called nebes or murajah). He then
uses his powerful imagination to bring the sender's image into his own
mind. In one session, Aman Tauhid said the name of Aman Risa, fre-
quently his rival, to himself, and the image immediately came into his
imagination. "But I knew it was him in any case," he added to me,
"because yesterday we were drinking coffee together in the coffee shop
and he said: 'she [the patient] won't be cured until her flesh separates
from her bones.' Of course, you die if your flesh separates from your
bones, so talking like that meant that he was the one who sent the
disease."
In this particular case Aman Tauhid found the knowledge of the
186 JOHN & BOWEN

sender's identity useful in curing the sick woman, because it directed

him to focus on ways of expelling the "one thousand dangers" (bele
seribu) spirit that is most often carried by the Pawang Tue (Elder
Huntsman), Aman Risa's usual intermediary in healing and sorcery.
Aman Tauhid's first step in healing was to try a spell and a compound
of medicinal substances that he knew to be effective against this spirit.
This step did not work, so he tried a different compound, one that
would induce the Pawang Tue to leave a patient. Finally, the patient
still sick, he employed a mungkur fruit as pemulang, vehicle of return,
to send the spirit back to Aman Risa. "I am doing this so that in the
future he doesn't harm other people," he said. (Aman Risa, in turn,
said that Aman Meja and several people in Kute Ryem village were the
usual senders of spirits in Isak.)
Abang Kerna and Aman Tauhid "work directly with inner reality"
{main batiri) through concentration and spells. The other two major
healers in Isak, both in Kute Rayang village, used the being called
Pawang Tue as an intermediary in sending back spirits. The Pawang
Tue is a spirit with a close link to humans through the afterbirth
(Bowen 1987:125-126; cf. Skeat 1967 [1900]: 112-120). Each healer
was able to describe for me with a fair degree of accuracy the techniques
used by the others, despite the fact that the details of the techniques
were closely guarded. Many individuals who only had been patients,
never healers themselves, also had varying degrees of knowledge about
how the techniques worked, the identity of the harmful spirits, and
those of the most frequently harming members of the communities.
Although the healing process neither requires nor facilitates a participa-
tion or comprehension by the patient of the healer's speech, the healer
frequendy discusses with the patient the nature and source of the
illness.
Because he can defeat hisrivalby simply returning the harmful spirit
to its source, the healer can derive pleasurefromthe contest and victory
without any public confrontation. Indeed, the private nature of the
process allows each healer to construct his own set of victory narratives
withoutriskingpublic adjudication or confirmation. Each of the major
Isak healers would regale me with stories about such accomplish-
ments, though their attitudes ranged from proudly boastful to abashed
acknowledgment.
Missingfromthe healers' accounts of their duels was a sense of moral
outrage or condemnation. The ethos of antisorcery was agonistic, not
moral. To some extent this particular feeling-tone of Isak sorcery dis-
course can be explained by the politics of speech and emotion: an out-
A Muslim Discourse ofSorcery 187

ward expression of rage would have betokened an insufficiently devel-

oped sense of shame, and it would have threatened the fragile, interac-
tive form of political-legal discourse. Yet this form of explanation
remains solely at the sociopolitical level and fails to explain how sorcery
could be perceived more as a contest than as a sin.

The Morality of Sorcery

Let us first return to the attitude of the healers themselves toward
illness and health. The healer has an effect because he is able to call on
God and angels, or at least invoke their power. "When we pronounce a
spell in the name of God," said one healer, "we are Adam speaking,
calling on all thirty divisions of the Koran to descend and heal the per-
son. The Koran is the basis of all knowledge and can be used to kill or
to heal, to clarify or to obscure." The power of the Koran is described
here as itself amoral, usable for healing or harming. In this respect
(though not in others), the Gayo attitude toward religious power
resembles the Javanese concept of power as outlined by Benedict
Anderson (1972). "Since all power derives from a single homogeneous
source," writes Anderson (1972:8) about the Javanese notion, "power
itself antecedes questions of good and evil."
God is also viewed as taking a catholic view toward appeals to His
power. God and angels receive all requests for assistance, and thus can
be called on to destroy someone and to protect him, to send a spirit to
do ill and to send him back to the original source. This view is
explained by reference to the creation of being. In the stories of crea-
tion I heard from several Isak men, God created Nur Muhammad, the
Light of Muhammad, as his first externalization. The two beings thus
exist in complementary relation (Bowen 1987:122-124). Using writing
as the image for creation, one man explained that, although you think
first of Allah and his aliph (the first letter of the word), when you write
an aliph you must begin with a dot, thus a mitn, the first letter of
Muhammad. From this perspective, God and humans are seen as
depending on each other. And just as humans must worship God, so
He must receive humans' requests.
God appears as being above good and evil. Because esoteric knowl-
edge and ritual conduct (worship, fasting, and other observances) are
knowledge of and obedience to God, they too are represented as above
good and evil. Thus, sending a spirit to harm someone is not ethically
wrong, although it may be condemned as counter to one's sympathies
and thus socially wrong.
188 JOHN R . BOWEN

Indeed, some spirit-caused illnesses were said to have been not only
tolerated but commanded by God. Abang Kerna explained smallpox,
measles, and other rashlike diseases as being brought by a single spirit,
The Ruler (Reje):

God ordered the spirit to bow down before Adam, but he refused,
saying that he, not Adam, was the ruler [reje]. So God gave him a mis-
sion, to travel around the world and collect souls for himself. He takes
those who have a certain kind of blood. We all have different kinds;
that is why doctors can inject some people with frog-blood but not
others. The Reje cannot be destroyed. Other spirits follow him and
cause other illnesses; still others are sent by people.

The activities of spirits are thus made to seem natural, and the activi-
ties of sorcerers but a subset of this natural order. The physiological dis-
course of healers also naturalizes the poisons that may be delivered by
spirits or physically deposited by sorcerers. Poison (tube) and antidote
(;tawar) are substances that must remain in balance in the human body.
Insufficient amounts of poison can cause illness, as can insufficient
amounts of antidote. Furthermore, with the alteration of a few words
the same spells can be used to make a substance into a poison or an
antidote.
This Gayo view of the role of divine agency in sorcery channels the
emotions and the practical activities of Isak Gayo toward the exorcism
and return of spirits. It withholds ethical judgment of sorcery, or at
least removes it to a distant Day of Judgment.6 It appears likely that
Gayo adopted precisely the moral and cosmological elements from
Islam that allowed them to reproduce their egalitarian and nonconflic-
tual modes of political discourse. This hypothesis could be put to com-
parative tests within the Malay-Indonesian region.
Some of the ideas and practices mentioned above appear elsewhere in
the Malay-Indonesian culture area. The idea of a balance of qualities in
the body, usually arranged in fours, and the use of various leaves and
compounds together with Malay and Arabic spells, are found widely in
Malaysia (Peletz 1988; Skeat 1967 [1900]). But the Gayo emphasize
discourse with spirits and concentration through trumpet over the use of
charms and objects, and in this respect appear distinct in comparison to
these societies.
The relatively esoteric and private discourse about sorcery practiced
by Gayo also may be more difficult to discover than the spells and
objects found elsewhere. Earlier descriptions of the Gayo (Kreemer
A Muslim Discourse ofSorcery 189

1922-23; Snouck Hurgronje 1903) mentioned only spells and signs of

good or bad fortune and did not discuss the practices described here. It
may be the case that, in other societies as well, ethnographers whose
primary focus was on other topics failed to discover similar ideas and
practices. If such is the case, then a new ethnographic focus on Islamic
knowledge may redirect the study of religion in the region, as well as
the study of magic, away from the search for survivals of pre-Islamic
ideas and practices and toward the study of how Southeast Asians have
appropriated Islamic ideas and practices for use in specific social and
cultural contexts.

Notes and References

1. This chapter is based on fieldwork carried out in the Gayo highlands
in 1978-80, and in short trips in 1983,1985, and 1989. Fieldwork was funded
by the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Social Science Research Council (USA),
and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and was sponsored locally by the Universi-
tas Syiah Kuala, Aceh.
2. No mention was made of such accusations in the lengthy ethnography of
the Gayo compiled by C. Snouck Hurgronje (1903), which was particularly
concerned with issues of authority and politics. _
3. Elsewhere (Bowen 1987) I have analyzed the relation of maripet to Ara-
bic ma'rifat ("knowledge of a higher kind," or "gnosis"), with reference to the
historical transmission of religious knowledge in Aceh.
4. The Gayo stories refer to the historical scholar and religious official Syam-
suddin al-Samatrani (d. 1630), whose theological monism was attacked in the
seventeenth century in Aceh, especially by Nuruddin al-Raniri.
5. Line 37 of Hamzah's Asmru'l-Amfin fi batya Ilm al-Suluk wa'l-Tawhid
(Cod. Or. 7291 (I), Library, University of Leiden; cited in al-Attas 1970:233-
296.
6. Not that healers are without doubts and worries on this score. Indeed,
Abang Kerna, who in 1980 was rather unabashedly boastful of his victories
over sorcerers, in 1989 had begun to be concerned that in these returns he may
have inflicted too much harm on men and women who were not serious sor-
cerers. The greater concern with God's judgment that comes with aging, and
perhaps the effect of a continual modernist critique of spirit manipulation, had
led him to shift his moral perspective and to choose more carefully the cases he
agreed to solve.

Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. 1972. The idea of power in Javanese culture. In

Culture and politics in Indonesia, ed. C. Holt, 1-69. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press.
al-Attas, Syed Naguib. 1970. The mysticism ofHamzah Fansuri. Kuala Lumpur:
University of Malaya Press.
190 J O H N R . BOWEN

Bowen, John R. 1987. Islamic transformations: From Sufi poetry to Gayo rit-
ual. In Indonesian religions in transition, ed. Rita Smith Kipp and Susan
Rodgers, 113-135. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
. 1989. Poetic duels and political change in the Gayo highlands of
Sumatra. American Anthropologist 91:25—40.
Brenneis, Donald L., and Fred Myers, eds. 1984. Dangerous words: Language
and politics in the Pacific. New York: New York University Press.
Kreemer, J. 1922-1923. Atjeh. 2 vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Lieban, Richard W. 1967. Cebuano sorcery: Malign magic in the Philippines.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Peletz, Michael G. 1988. Poisoning, sorcery, and healing rituals in Negeri
Sembilan. Bijdragen totde Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 144:132-164.
Rosaldo, Michelle. 1984. Words that are moving: The social meanings of Ilon-
got verbal art. In Dangerous words: Language and politics in the Pacific, ed.
Donald L. Brenneis and Fred Myers, 131-160.
Skeat, Walter W. 1967 [1900], Malay magic. New York: Dover.
Snouck Hurgronje, C. 1903. Het Gayoland en Zijne Bewoners. Batavia: Lands-
drukkerij.
 11
Perceptions from Within:
Malign Magic in Indonesian
Literature

C . W . WATSON

M O D E R N INDONESIAN LITERATURE contains numerous references

to incidents of witchcraft and sorcery, and in this chapter I consider
four specific examples. It is not my intention, however, to suggest that
these fictional representations directly reflect what is to be found in
Indonesian society. With others (Sweeney 1989; Bhabha 1984) who
have insisted that literature, especially postcolonial literature, does not
simply mimic social reality but creates it (for the reader to recreate in his
or her turn), I want to argue that literary representations must be sited
within a sociohistorical and political context prior to any evaluation.
Consequendy, in reflecting on my chosen examples I first seek to estab-
lish how the literature should be read. More specifically, in the context
of a symposium on witchcraft and sorcery, I want to show how this fic-
tional material should be read by anthropologists who are alert enough
to recognize the problems inherent in trying to read off the fiction as
straightforward ethnographic data yet nonetheless feel that inscribed
within the literature are social understandings of witchcraft and sorcery.
The following discussion, then, is tentatively offered as a general
model to anthropologists of how they might approach literary sources,
taking as its specific example literary references to witchcraft and sorcery
in modern Indonesian literature. Out of a number of potential
approaches I have limited myself to three illustrations of very different
types of engagement with literary texts. The first explores what might
be described as the political context of the writing and reading of the
texts, suggesting with reference to the early Indonesian fiction that

191
192 C . W . WATSON

postcolonial didacticism controls the articulation of the phenomena of

witchcraft, shaping a view of how it should be assessed in relation to
social values. The second form of engagement, while acknowledging
that such a controlling and shaping is taking place, insists that there is
nevertheless a correspondence between the accounts and interpreta-
tions of witchcraft contained in the fiction and generally available social
explanations. At one level, of course, this has to be true—if there were
no correspondence, the novels could not masquerade as the documen-
tary realism they clearly purport to be. But I try to move beyond this
simple acknowledgment of general correspondence to argue that there
is in fact a close and specific fit between image and reality. At this point
I refer to my own field observations as an anthropologist to demon-
strate that linkage between popular conceptions and literary representa-
tions. The description here is restricted and leaves open the crucial
anthropological question of where the popular conceptions derive from
—other chapters in this book offer suggestions in this respect—but
those examples from the field do at least point to a shared discourse,
the grammar of which could be systematically elaborated.
The third approach to the texts can best be understood on an anal-
ogy with good anthropological practice. Among those informants the
anthropologist conventionally (mythically?) encounters in the field is
the exegete, the interpreter of rituals, the philosopher, the wise man,
or sometimes the trickster of the tribe, Castaneda's Don Juan or Victor
Turner's Muchona, "the Hornet." It is this person who raises the level
of explanation above the simple description and analysis of the particu-
lar observed phenomena and locates the specific example within a sym-
bolic and totalizing frame of epistemological reference. Such infor-
mants are frequently the storytellers, the griots, the fabulists, the
repositories of knowledge of the tribe. In a contemporary context, too,
one can detect those writers of texts who see themselves as the natural
heirs of this tradition of explaining through storytelling, and their texts
operate at that same level of intuitive apprehension. (A fine, although
not always easy to follow, example that reveals how such texts operate
is Spivak's [1987] discussion of the Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi's
story The Breast-Giver.) For my purposes here I have chosen to look at
an allegorical story set in the region of West Java most associated in the
popular imagination with sorcery. As we shall see, the mode of anthro-
pologically apprehending such a story differs substantially from the pre-
viously described approaches to the realist texts, but it differs in
the same way an anthropologist differentially evaluates the insights
obtained from exchanges with the significant informant.
Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature 193

The Political Context of Literary Forms

Of crucial significance to identifying the tenor of the references to
witchcraft and sorcery is establishing early on the socioliterary context
of those references: what social attitudes toward witchcraft is the writ-
ing pushing the reader to adopt? It is well known, for example, that in
many postcolonial societies the early influence of missionaries and edu-
cation department officials working through government printing
houses prompted writers to assume a colonial mentality in novels that
are hostile to the pagan/demonic dimensions of the precolonial culture.
(See, for example, the early novels from South Africa, Sol T. Plaatje's
Mbudi and Thomas Mofolo's Chaka, which are of this kind.) In the
Indonesian case, then, the context of the reference needs to be dis-
cussed: who publishes the books and what cognitive and ethical
demands are implicidy being made upon the writers and, in their turn,
of the readers? At this point let us consider some examples.
In chapter 4 of Sitti Nurbaya, first published in 1922, Sutan Hamzah
and his sister Puteri Rubiah are discussing the behavior of their brother
Sutan Mahmud, a local magistrate (Tuanku Penghulu) and respected
member of the community in Padang in West Sumatra. The crux of the
matter is that the latter appears to be disregarding the conventions of
behavior (adat) expected of someone in his position and, furthermore,
is being neglectful of the advice of his siblings, an especially grave charge
in the context of Minangkabau matrilineal organization. Sutan Ham-
zah and Rubiah would like him to take a second wife, since this would
give him more prestige in local eyes and indirectly raise their status: it is
thus a question of family honor. However, Sutan Mahmud has reso-
lutely refused to take a second wife, arguing, with the author's evident
approval, that one wife is sufficient and that contemporary social atti-
tudes on this matter need to be changed. For Rubiah and Sutan Ham-
zah there is only one explanation for his apparently aberrant behavior,
which is that he has been the victim of sorcery. (The Indonesian text
has "Barangkali telah termakan perbuatan orang," which is explained
in a footnote kena ramuan guna-guna [pekasih~\—hs& consumed a magi-
cally endowed substance.) The obvious person to suspect is Mahmud's
wife.

Tentu saja sudah diberinya ilmu, kakanda Mahmud. Kalau tiada, masa-
kan ia takluk kepadanya dan suka menyuruh majukan anaknaya. Ten-
tulah ia yang mengasut-asut kakanda Mahmud supaya benci kepada
sekalian. Ia takut kakanda Mahmud beristeri pula, kalau-kalau ia tiada
194 C . W . WATSON

terpakai lagi. Sungguh keras ilmu pcrempuan jahat itu! Bukan takluk
saja laki-laki kepadanya tetapi pikirannyapun sampai bertukar pula.

[Of course, brother Mahmud has been subject to her ilmu (power, art).
If not, he wouldn't be so obedient to her and be so forward in persuad-
ing her to advance her child. Of course, it's she who has urged brother
Mahmud on to dislike everyone. She's afraid that brother Mahmud
will take other wives because she might be discarded. That evil wom-
an's ilmu is really strong. Not only are men obedient to her, but even
their wits are turned.]

In the circumstances there is only one thing for them to do: they
must call in someone to cure Mahmud (Baikiah kirn can dukun yang
pcmdai untuk mengobatinya). Consequently, a dukun (a catch-all term for
healer, sorcerer, magician), a certain Djuara Lintau, is summoned and
the case is put to him. He confirms for them that Mahmud's abstemi-
ous behavior has been the subject of local gossip and says that he will
help. To assist him to divine who the culprit is, he asks for burning
charcoal and incense (kemenyan), a bowl of water, and seven yellowed
sirih leaves. When these objects are brought, he burns the incense,
recites some spells (membaca-baca beberapa mentera), fans the smoke
three times over the water with the sirih leaves, and then puts all the
sirih leaves into the water while reciting further spells. Finally, after
looking at the leaves, he delivers his verdict: Mahmud has been the vic-
tim of powerful sorcery, which has made him blindly obedient to the
person who has brought on the sorcery. After a bit more probing, he
confirms that it is a woman who is causing the trouble, and this is suffi-
cient for Hamzah and Rubiah to request him not only to take counter-
measures with ilmu and ramuan (potions) but to ensure that Mahmud
turns against his wife and divorces her.
Djuara Lintau agrees to do this and asks for a used item of
Mahmud's clothing to help him with his magic. Next he asks for a hair
of Mahmud's wife, saying that if he fails to make Mahmud turn against
her, he will work on her with a spirit attack (sijudai) so that she is pos-
sessed and driven mad. They agree to this, and after receiving payment
from them he goes off.
That the passage does reflect widespread belief, if not widespread
practice, is hardly open to doubt. In Minangkabau there was, and con-
tinues to be, personal conflict structurally related to competing
demands between a man's siblings and his wife, with respect to the dis-
posal of property and the way in which a man divides his time and
energy between his natal and marital kin. Furthermore, it is common
for a man who is considered to be excessively under his wife's influence
Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature 195

to be suspected of being subject to malign magic. Some indication of

this is suggested by the fairly frequent use of the vulgar phrase—albeit
now used largely metaphorically—tamakan ciri bamndang ("having
eaten fried feces," a common ingredient of love potions).
The accusation of witchcraft, then, is a fairly common one, and the
passage in this respect is a particularly vivid illustration of the kind of
thing an anthropologist is likely to hear in the field. The various items
of paraphernalia mentioned here—the smoke, the incense, the sirih
leaves, the used item of clothing, the strand of hair—are also familiar, as
is the image of the dukun reciting spells (baca mentera). Less common,
however, is the description of the commissioning of the dukun: people
who employ dukun for nefarious purposes are unlikely to reveal they do
so, and dukun themselves do not frequently advertise themselves as
practicing sorcery.
The passage, then, has an authentic ring to it, as indeed we should
expect, given that it is written within the conventions of realist fiction.
Sitti Nurbaja was intended to be a modern Indonesian novel; it suc-
ceeds only insofar as it can convince the reader that the plot is credible,
and to achieve that credibility, the details of background—historical and
social—must be sufficiendy realistic to be recognizable and acceptable
to the reader. That realism is beautifully captured in the passage, not
only through the necessary attention to detail—ranging from the name
of the dukun, Djuara Lintau, resonant as it is to a Minangkabau reader
of the marginal world of the parewa, to the payment of the fee—but also
through the careful way in which the chicanery of the dukun is inti-
mated. It is not he who initiates the accusations, he simply responds to
suggestions and confirms what his clients wish to hear.
The reader, consequendy, is predisposed to accept the account as
realistic, picking up, as it must, incidents and stories within the realm,
of her own experience and at the same time extending and combining
that direct experience by presenting a highly believable account of the
operation of witchcraft.
The alert reader, however, will be in no doubt as to the author's own
views of this action. In the first place, Rubiah's and Hamzah's attitudes
are implicidy condemned by the author, who throughout the book
sides with Mahmud and his progressive attitudes toward marriage and
family responsibility and his hostility to the life-style of the Padang
nobility. Second, with the careful description of Djuara Lintau's
responses and the indication that clearly no magical power or special
knowledge has been demonstrated by the dukun, the writer's contempt
for, and skepticism of, the dukun's power are amply confirmed.
To those familiar with the publication of these early modern Indo-
196 C . W . WATSON

nesian novels this antitraditional stance of the author comes as no

surprise. The Dutch government had deliberately set up its own
publishing house, Balai Pustaka, to promote literature that would be
educational and progressive in tone, and consequendy it was to be
expected that while realism might demand the accurate reflection of
social beliefs and practices, morality required that progressive ideas
should be supported and conservative traditionalism condemned. In
this respect Marah Rusli was happy to oblige, not only because he had
been brought up in a Western educational environment, but also
because he appears to have had his own personal reasons for reacting
hostilely to the demands of Minangkabau adat— or at least its Padang
transformations (see Taufik Abdullah 1970).
Further evidence that there was what might be considered a Balai
Pustaka line on sorcery which was one of rationalist exposure of super-
stition is to be found in another Balai Pustaka book of the same period,
Tulis St. Sati's Sengsam Membawa Nikmat, first published in 1929 and
also set in West Sumatra. In a long passage in that book (176-178) the
hero, Midun, describes to a young girl, Halimah, how it often occurs
that divorce comes about as a result of having recourse to a dukun. But
his explanation is a rationalist one. A woman who suspects that her
husband is going to take another wife or is about to divorce her fre-
quendy goes to a dukun to seek his aid. The latter exploits the situation
by promising to help but constantly asking for money and support to
aid his magic. This the woman gives, to the neglect of her household
budget. Thus household affairs fall into disarray and the husband, see-
ing the wretched state of things, divorces her. Furthermore, Midun
points out, the various love potions (¿¡una^und), as he has heard, are
made up of disgusting elements, which if administered lead to illness.
(See also another novel by Tulis St. Sati (1932:21) where the same
point is made.) And, sometimes, a dukun uses the opportunity to get
even with an enemy and gives poison to be administered. The result is
the same, the destruction of the family, as has been the case with an
aunt of Midun's who now bitterly regrets her actions.
The last detail, superfluous as it is to the point Midun is making,
adds that touch of realism to the account which not only makes it plau-
sible but suggests that it is grounded in some actual experience. Doubt-
less there were, and are, women in the society who are suspected of
having had recourse to¿funa^juna and caused domestic tragedy, and are
consequently shunned.
In both these Balai Pustaka books, then, the reality of recourse to
malign magic is emphasized, a recourse required either because there is
Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature 197

a felt need to retaliate in order to counter the effects of another's

malign magical influence, or to preempt that influence by administer-
ing magical potions. In both cases, however, the personality of the
dukun is associated with trickery and deceit, and his power is attributed
less to magic than to the gullibility of his clients and the noxious sub-
stances used to concoct his potions. In the stories the dukun is both
peripheral to the society and to the narrative, and this is as we might
have anticipated from the ethos of Balai Pustaka. The same moral tone
is also to be found in the modernist Muslim fiction of the period (see
Dimyati 1935).
In a much later novel, Harimaul Harimau\ (1975), written by the
well-known journalist and writer, Mochtar Lubis, the dukun is the cen-
tral figure of the narrative. The story is again located in Sumatra, this
time in the jungle not the town, and the thematic interest is less social
criticism than an examination of the psychology of character set against
the background of belief and superstition in relation to the lore of the
jungle and the spirit of the tiger.
Psychological analysis of character is Lubis' forte, most ably brought
to bear in his earlier novel Jalan Tak Ada Ujung (translated into English
as Boad Without End). It is, however, unusual for him to set his plots
within the world of rural superstition, since his own personal circum-
stances are far removed from that world. Nonetheless, the book won
great critical praise for the way in which the atmosphere of fear was
created through the careful description of a small group of hunters
moving through the jungle and very much prey to traditional supersti-
tion. At the very least, then, the book provides evidence of what a
modern Indonesian public takes to be an accurate and authentic repre-
sentation of such a social group.
The story is told through the eyes of a young man, Buyung, who is
one of a party led by Wak Katok. Buyung is anxious to learn magic
(ilmu sihir) from the latter, who has the reputation of being a great
dukun. As Buyung has heard it (15)

Menurut cerita orang, jika bersilat, Wak Katok dapat membunuh

lawannya, tanpa tangan, kaki atau pisau mengenai lawannya. Cukup
dengan gerak tangan atau kaki saja yang ditujukan ke arah kepala, perut
atau ulu hati lawan, dan lawannya pasti akan jatuh, mati terhampar di
tanah. Sebagai dukun dia terkenal ke kampung lain. Dia pandai mengo-
bati penyakit biasa, akan tetpi juga dapat mengobati perempuan atau
lelaki yang kena guna-guna; dia punya ilmu yang dapat membuat sese-
seorang sakit perut sampai mati, dia pandai membuat jimat yang
ampuh, yang dapat mengelakkan bahaya ular, atau binatang buas yang
198 C . W . WATSON

lain, membuat orang jatuh sayang atau takut atau segan, membuat
orang menerima permintaan seseorang, dia punya ilmu pemanis untuk
orang muda, lelaki atau perempuan, dia punya mantera dan jimat
supaya orang selamat dalam perjalanan, jimat supaya kebal terhadap
senjata, atau jimat supaya kebal terhadap racun ular, dia dapat mem-
buat orang muntah darah sampai mati, dan dia punya mantera untuk
menghilang, hingga tak dapat terlihat oleh orang lain.
Buyung dan kawan-kawannya selalu bermimpi akan diberi pelajaran
oleh Wak Katok ilmu sihir yang dahsyat. Dia terutama sekali ingin
dapat belajar mantera pemikat hati gadis.

[According to what people said, if he was fighting Silat style, Wak

Katok could kill his opponent without a hand or a foot or a knife
touching the opponent. A gesture of the arm or the foot was sufficient
and when it was pointed in the direction of his head or his stomach or
the base of his heart the opponent would certainly fall and, prostrate,
would lie dead on the ground. As a dukun his reputation was known as
far as other villages. He could cure ordinary illnesses, but he could also
cure women or men who had been subject to guna-guna\ he had a
knowledge of how to give someone a fatal stomach illness; he knew
how to make very effective talismans which could turn away dangerous
snakes or other wild animals; he could make a person feel emotions of
affection, fear, or respect; he could make a person accept someone's
proposal; he knew how to make love potions for young people, boys
or girls; he had spells and charms so that people were safe on their jour-
neys, charms to make one invulnerable against weapons, or charms so
that one was invulnerable against snake poison; he could make a person
vomit blood until he died; and he had spells to make himself invisible
so that he could not be seen by others.
Buyung and his friends were constantly speculating on how they
would learn from Wak Katok a powerful magic. In particular, Buyung
wanted to learn the spell to capture the heart of a girl.]

The catalogue of powers here ascribed to Wak Katok again corre-

sponds very closely to what one hears in the field: the ability to cause
harm, to offer protection, to bewitch people; to provide talismans
(jimat)\ the knowledge of spells (mantera); invulnerability, and the abil-
ity to disappear. These are exactly the beliefs that Skeat describes and
the spells he has recorded in Malay Magic (see also the recent book by
Jamil Bakar et al.) More importantly, for Mochtar Lubis and his read-
ers, Buyung's credulity is representative of the strong hold which these
beliefs still have over the peasant imagination in remote areas of Indo-
nesia.
As the story unfolds, however, and more and more of the character
of Wak Katok is revealed, the rationalist assumptions of the reader are
Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature 199

confirmed, and Wak Kotok, like the dukun in the Balai Pustaka novels,
is exposed as a fraud, guilty of deception and trickery, a coward and a
charlatan, whose power is a function not of any secret skills but of the
gullibility of society. Lubis goes further than the earlier writers in the
description of the social environment in which the dukun flourishes. In
the Balai Pustaka novels, recourse to sorcery was simply one of a num-
ber of social evils open to criticism, and it was not so much the charac-
ter of the dukun per se that was held up for condemnation as the social
practice and the beliefs that allowed it to flourish. For Mochtar Lubis,
however, it is the individuals themselves and their exploitation of their
fellows which is at the center of his criticism. The point is further
emphasized in the description of Wak Hitam, Wak Katok's erstwhile
guru, who now lives isolated in the jungle with his young wife and who
from time to time receives visitors to his jungle hut. Of him, we learn
(77) from the account of his wife, that he

membuatkan racun yang dijualnya kepada orang-orang yang datang

memintanya untuk membunuh musuh-musuh mereka, dibuatnya dari
kotoran manusia yang dicampur dengan bulu bambu, disuruhnya
mencampurkan ke dalam kopi atau makanan orang yang akan diracun.
Dia juga membuat guna-guna, ada yang dibuat dari kotoran kuku atau
kotoran orang yang hendak memakai guna-guna itu, dari rambut
perempuan yang hendak diguna-guna. . . .

[made poison to sell to people who came asking for it so that they
could kill their enemies. Made out of human detritus mixed with bam-
boo fibres, it was to be mixed in the coffee or food of the person to be
poisoned. He also made gunarguna, which were made from the dirt of
fingernails or the excrement of the person who was to be the subject of
the sorcery, or they were made from the hair of a woman who was to
be bewitched. . . .]

Here, it is individual dukun as much as the institution who are being

condemned, and the young Buyung is seen as an innocent follower
rather than a culpable would-be exponent of sorcery. Nonetheless,
there is an element of artificiality in Mochtar Lubis' account of things.
The catalogue of evils reads too much like a textbook list, or at best a
simple retelling of what is customarily associated with dukun. There is
nothing original, nothing to suggest any anthropological realism in his
account. In all respects except one, it seems at an even further stage
from social reality than the work of the earlier writers. They, it would
appear, were writing from immediate acquaintance. Mochtar Lubis is
composing out of what are already secondhand accounts.
The one exception to this lies in the way in which a close association
200 C . W . WATSON

is made between the world of jungle and the dukun's power. This ele-
ment has not been considered in the earlier accounts, which were set in
the world of the town and village; yet, as we shall see, the belief in the
power of the dukun is often closely linked with animal familiars and the
mysteries of the jungle. Before taking this up, however, I want to turn
to a more recent novel that differs from the other works so far discussed
by giving credence to the power of malign magic, and is thus, arguably,
more in tune with the popular belief in the efficacy of sorcery. One of
the reasons for this, it seems to me, is precisely because it is operating
outside of a postcolonial context, in a different tradition, then, from
the Balai Pustaka novels and the works of Mochtar Lubis.
Lintang Kemukus Dint Hon (1985) is the second volume of a trilogy
by Ahmad Tohari known by the tide of the first volume, Ronggeng
Dukuh Paruk. The whole trilogy, which was originally serialized in
Kompas, a newspaper widely read throughout Indonesia, was extremely
popular. It tells of a ronggeng dancer, Srintil, who is a kind of sacred
prostitute (cf. the Indian devadasi) in the village of Dukuh Paruk in cen-
tral Java, and the plot is apparently based on recent events in a real vil-
lage in that area (Hellwig 1988).
At one point in the novel a man called Marsusi, who feels insulted
because he has been rejected by Srintil, goes to a dukun to seek the
means for revenge. While waiting in the dukun's house he meets
another man, Dilam, who is also waiting for a consultation with the
dukun. The story proceeds as follows. Dilam explains to Marsusi that he
desires vengeance against a neighbor who, as an upshot of a dispute
over Dilam's buffalo straying over his fields, poisoned the buffalo.
Dilam is then summoned by the dukun to explain his purpose. He does
so, and the dukun counsels him to go for a short walk and think again.
When he comes back from the walk, remembering what happened to
his buffalo, he is still determined to go through with it, and the dukun,
observed by Marsusi, sets about his sorcery (101):

"Saya tetap pada pendirian semula. Sudahlah, Kek. Pokoknya semua

ini atas tanggungjawab saya."
"Baiklah kalau begitu."
Tarim bangkit meninggalkan tamunya. Seperempat jam kemudian
dia muncul lagi membawa sebuah cawan berisi air bening dan sehelai
kain mori. Setelah terpapar di atas meja Dilam baru melihat ada sebuah
jarum berekor benang terselip pada kain mori. Tak urung hati Dilam
terkesiap melihat benda-benda yang mendadak berpenguruh magis itu.
Kakek Tarim duduk. Entah mengapa napasnya terengah-engah.
Keningnya mengkilat oleh titik keringat. Jarum dipegang pada ekor
Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature 201

benangnya, diayun-ayun memutar tepat di atas cawan. Ayunan dihen-

tikan. Jarum yang masih bcrpusing-pusing itu ditunggunya sampai
bcrhenti. Kemudian dijatuhkan tepat di tengah air dalam cawan. Air
seperti mendidih dan Tarim cepat menutup cawan itu dengan kain
mori. Sesaat kemudian terdengar suara gemercik. Kain mori itu disin-
gkapkan. Airnya masih bening tetapi jarum berekor benang itu telah
lenyap.
"Kirimanmu sudah berangkat," kata Tarim. Ketegangan pada wajah-
nya mengendur. Dengan ujung baju dilapnya keringat yang mengucur
deras. Sementara itu Dilam sendiri belum bisa melepaskan diri dari
kebisuan yang sebenar-benarnya. Dan Dilam terperanjat ketika ter-
dengar lagi suara berkecipak dari dalam cawan yang term tup mori.
Tarim membukanya.
Mata Dilam membulat melihat air dalam cawan sudah berubah.
Jarum berekor benang kelihatan lagi, mengkilat dalam cairan yang lam-
bat-laun menjadi merah. Darah mengental pada ekor benang itu, larut
perlahan-lahan merata dalam cairan.
"Hem, selesai," kata Tarim sambil mengemasi perkakasnya. "Sekali
lagi, Nak. Semua ini terjadi atas tanggung jawab sampean sepenuhnya.
Kalau besok cepat pulang ke Warubosok sampean bisa melihat pengu-
buran mayat seteru sampean itu."
["I'm of the same mind as before. I've decided. Whatever the conse-
quences, I'll be responsible for them."
"That's clear then."
Tarim got up and left his visitor. A quarter of an hour later he
appeared again carrying a cup of clear water and a piece of white cloth.
It was only after the items were put on the table that Dilam saw that
there was a needle with some thread attached to the cloth. Dilam was
uneasily surprised suddenly to see these objects of magical power.
Kakek Tarim sat down. For some reason his breathing came in short
heavy bursts. His forehead glistened with perspiration. The needle held
by the end of the thread was gently turned in circles immediately above
the cup. The movement ceased. There was a pause until the needle
which continued to move in circles stopped. Then it was dropped
straight into the water in the middle of the cup. The water seemed to
boil and Tarim quickly closed the cup with the cloth. A moment later
the sound of dripping was heard. The cloth was taken away. The water
was still clear but the needle and thread had now disappeared.
"Your gift has been sent," said Tarim. The tension in his face eased.
With the end of his sleeve he wiped the perspiration, which was flow-
ing freely. All the while Dilam himself could not shake off the dumb-
ness which had set in. And he was startled when he heard the sound of
a splash from the cup, [now] closed again with the cloth. Tarim took
the cloth away.
202 C . W . WATSON

Dilam stared, his eyes wide: the water in the cup had now changed.
The needle with the thread was there again, glinting in the water,
which was gradually turning red. There was thick blood at the end of
the thread. It was dispersing slowly and evenly in the water.
"It's finished," said Tarim packing away the thing?. "Once more,
son. All this is entirely your responsibility. If you go back to Warubo-
sok quickly tomorrow you will be able to see the burial of your enemy.]
The graphic portrayal of the act of sorcery and the telling description
of the fear and trembling of Dilam when he realizes what he has done
(not included in the above translation) render this passage even more
realistic and psychologically convincing than Harimau! Harimau! Here,
it would appear, we are not dealing with fanciful reconstructions of a
naive peasant mentality but with an almost transparent reproduction of
real events and feelings. In this way, contrary to the ethos of the other
novels, Ahmad Tohari's writing lends support to the belief in the
power of sorcery: its efficacy is immediately apparent; neither the
reader nor Dilam doubts that the victim died the moment the needle
disappeared from the cup.
Noticeably absent from Tohari's writing is that hint of didacticism
which still lingers in Mochtar Lubis' writing, that desire to explain,
instruct, and preach, and consequently, it seems to me, in terms of
representing both the society and its beliefs, Tohari is the more reliable
witness. It is important to separate the two elements being represented,
the society and its beliefs, since other modes of representation reflect
the one more accurately than they do the other. Films concerning black
magic and sorcery and various forms of superstition are very common
and popular in Indonesia. Their social settings, however, are rarely real-
istic and the characters only marginally credible. On the other hand,
the beliefs and superstitions they portray closely reflect the beliefs and
suspicions of the cinema-going public. (One should, of course, be wary
of the assumption that all those who enjoy vampire films believe in the
existence of vampires. However, the popularity of such films in Indo-
nesia and the corresponding accounts that appear in newspapers of
beliefs in witchcraft and sorcery indicate the possibility of some corre-
lation.)
At a superficial level, then, the figure of the dukun Tarim comes
nearest in the fictional portrayals we have been considering to the type
of sorcerer in which the society at large believes. But how close is this
correspondence and how precisely can we estimate it? To try to answer
this I want to contrast the literary discourse we have so far been consid-
ering with some of my observations on the dukun whom I encountered
in the field, and with the nature of social discourse about them.
Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature 203

Fictional and Social Discourses of Witchcraft

Kerinci, the area of my fieldwork, is, as it turns out, an especially
suitable vantage point from which to compare discourses of malign
magic. Not only does it lie adjacent to West Sumatra, and hence is
heavily influenced by Minangkabau institutions of the kind described
in the fiction, but from the circumstantial evidence it would also appear
to be the setting of Harimau! Harimau! (in fact, as a boy Lubis was
brought up in the area and has written of it with affection). Further-
more, on a more general level Kerinci has a reputation throughout
Sumatra and Malaya for being a somewhat remote and mysterious
region, where the forces of malign magic still exercise a very strong
influence. In particular, the people of Kerinci are often thought of as
being weretigers, a still powerful superstition that makes them objects
of suspicion in the areas to which they migrate.
In Kerinci itself, a densely populated valley in the Bukit Barisan
range of mountains, there are about two hundred or so scattered vil-
lages lying in districts each of which has its own distinctive traditions.
Although there is no belief in weretigers, there is a great deal of suspi-
cion among villages: one has the reputation as the abode of sorcerers;
another is identified with specialists in poisoning; in yet another there is
said to exist a family which has the services of a tiger-familiar. True to
form, the more remote the village is from the teller of the tale, the
more fantastic the attributions.
In the village where I resided, Lubuk Dalam (a pseudonym), there
were several dukun, as well as individuals who from time to time went
into a trance and appeared to be possessed. A description of the variety
of functions and services all these people performed in the community
and the way in which factors of gender affected the form of the service
and its social context would require more space than I have here. One
or two general remarks are, however, relevant. The roles that the heal-
ers and the dukun performed were of the kind familiar from the ethno-
graphic literature: there were bonesetters and masseurs, herbalists, sell-
ers of traditional medicines (often Javanese migrants), midwives,
healers, finders of lost objects, identifiers of black magic, purveyors of
spells. Some derived a regular, although not very substantial, income
from their specialist knowledge, others would practice only occasion-
ally if specially pressed by clients. It was noticeable that the villagers
themselves, although they would regularly resort to what might loosely
be called the medical specialists—bonesetters, traditional midwives—for
specific remedies, did not often go to fellow kinsmen for more general
complaints. For the chronic illness, infertility, or a general feeling of
204 C . W . WATSON

unease they went to migrants who had settled in the village: Minangka-
bau, Javanese, or Sundanese. Or they would look outside their village.
Conversely, those who most often called on the dukun native to the vil-
lage with a reputation for magical power were those who came from
other villages. Moreover, the latter would often ask the dukun to visit
them rather than come to Lubuk Dalam.
In the course of my fieldwork I became acquainted with two of this
type of dukun, both young men, one in his twenties, the other in his
thirties. Both were considered to be wastrels and were not "respect-
able." They both came from families that were undistinguished accord-
ing to local criteria: no one in the family had achieved eminence in the
fields of religion, politics, the civil service, or education. The young
men themselves had not completed their secondary education.
The elder of the two, whom I shall call Man, was sharp and astute.
He had left Kerinci as a teenager and worked his way to Jambi to seek
his fortune. From there he had worked on boats and become a deck-
hand, eventually traveling worldwide. Somehow he had picked up
a working knowledge of Chinese porcelain and, knowing that valua-
ble pieces were kept as heirlooms throughout Sumatra, became an
itinerant pedlar, and, through buying and selling, made large sums of
money, which he immediately squandered. Among his sidelines he had
also apprenticed himself to several dukun, learning their skills and
observing all the ritual prescriptions of fasting, temporary chastity, and
so on in order to acquire ilmu. He was very fluent and articulate and a
good self-publicist. In the village, elder people regarded him with sus-
picion, and clearly he was uneasy in his home surroundings. When he
came back, he always had money in his pocket and never lacked friends,
but his interest clearly lay in doing deals and getting people to work for
him, and his ambition was to discover the long-lost treasure of Sriwi-
jaya. Although he was spoken of as a dukun, I never knew anyone in
the village to approach him. He himself claimed to possess magical
skills—that is, he knew various spells and possessed magical items, kris,
and so on.
The other man, Besi, I had known before he laid claim to being a
dukun. He was an ordinary young man with a reputation for chasing
girls, who had, it seemed, decided to take up a career as a dukun. I
know nothing of how he set about this but simply that he returned to
Lubuk Dalam after an absence of a few weeks with a story that he had
cured the daughter of a senior official in Jambi of blindness, and he had
brought photographs of himself in the family house to prove it. Those
villagers who had contacts in Jambi were able to confirm that some-
Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature 205

thing mysterious had occurred and that Besi now had the reputation
there of being a powerful Aukun. Over the next few months his reputa-
tion spread, and although most senior villagers who knew him contin-
ued to regard his activities with skepticism, if not contempt, he was
clearly considered by many to have achieved the status of a minor figure
who, at the very least, it was dangerous to cross.
Both Man and Besi, then, were the type of Aukun to whom one
might appeal in trying to identify the cause of misfortune, and both
would claim to offer a remedy if a client was the subject of malign
magic. The mystery, the magic, and the chicanery and theater of ritual
practice were very much their speciality. In this respect they correspond
closely to the figure of Djuara Lintau in Sitti Nurbaya. He, too, has a
reputation outside his home village—he appears to have come from
Lintau—and he, too, is clearly astute and perceptive and adept at read-
ing the psychology of his client. The fictional portrait in this case, then,
has its real social counterparts. The same would appear to be true of the
Aukun in Harimau! Harimau!
Kerinci is surrounded by jungle, and there are various groups of peo-
ple who regularly go into it either for the purpose of occasional hunting
expeditions or to extract forest produce—gums and rattans—or some-
times, like the party in Harimau! Harimau!, to spend days or weeks in
the jungle for general hunting and gathering. It was always stressed to
me that on such expeditions it was important to have someone who
knew jungle lore, who not only could read the natural signs in the jun-
gle—follow paths, identify species, and so on—but who could also rec-
ognize supernatural forces, and, if necessary, take action against them
by making the necessary ritual gestures, for example, sacrificing a
chicken and uttering the appropriate incantation.
One such specialist—usually known as a pawang—-w3s introduced to
me in the house where I was staying. Bujang (pseudonym) was from
Siulak in north Kerinci and regularly came to visit a mutual friend, a
hunter, who lived in Lubuk Dalam. It was the latter who brought the
pawang round and, after introducing him, described his various abilities
and knowledge of the jungle. The people in the house were distinctly
uneasy about his presence, and it later transpired that the man, modest
though he appeared to be in front of me, had a reputation for being a
Aukun jahat (an evil Aukun), the kind of person to whom people went
for love potions and to perform sorcery; again, he was a man who did
not hold a position within the established village hierarchies in Siulak
but whose special knowledge was recognized while being a source of
suspicion. It was, however, universally accepted that it was men like
206 C . W . WATSON

him one would find it essential to take along as material and spiritual
guide in any expedition.
Clearly, it is this type of pawang who is the model for the central
character in Mochtar Lubis' novel, but Lubis, rather than developing
the description of specialist knowledge, has chosen to elaborate the
character in terms of justifying the local suspicion of the marginal man.
To some extent there seems to be a certain degree of distortion here,
since although local suspicion is certainly evident, there is no question
in the local mind that the specialists, in addition to their magical pow-
ers, do have a thorough knowledge of the jungle, something which
Lubis denies. Concerned as he is both to demonstrate the naïveté of
the peasant imagination and the duplicity of those they believe in, he
gives the dukun short shrift. In so doing he seems to be confusing the
two types of ¿«¿«»—Man and Besi, for whom the charge of manipula-
tion and deceit is indeed appropriate, with Buyung, who may or may
not be a trickster, but who certainly does have an intimate knowledge
of the jungle.
Tohari's dukun Tarim, it was suggested above, corresponded even
more closely to popular fears and fancies than the characters of other
novels. The only person I met in the field who was remotely similar
was, again, a dukun from another village, Semurup, which lies halfway
between Lubuk Dalam and Siulak. This dukun, Zohori (another pseu-
donym) had a very considerable reputation as a powerful sorcerer
among the women of Lubuk Dalam, who would consult him over
problems such as broken engagements and infertility. A middle-aged
man when I knew him, he also had the reputation of knowing some-
thing about local adat (tradition) in Semurup, and, if I am not mis-
taken, he had spent some time in the army. He lived simply in
Semurup, and his manner was modest, very much like Bujang and
unlike Man and Besi. People from Lubuk Dalam would go and consult
him in Semurup. Occasionally he would be asked up to Lubuk Dalam.
I remember seeing him in the mosque there one Friday and wondering
whom he was visiting.
I heard in some detail of one visit a friend and her female companion
had paid him. The friend was in her thirties and unmarried. She had
been engaged several times, but the arrangements had fallen through.
She was well educated, with a tertiary educational qualification from
Bandung, and she had decided to consult Zohori because she felt that
there was something unnatural about the failed engagements. At the
consultation in a darkened room Zohori appeared to go into a trance,
voices were heard, and it appears that a spirit-familiar had revealed that
Malign. Magic in Indonesian Literature 207

a rejected suitor had been practicing sorcery to thwart Halidah's mar-

riage plans. He was able to work his magic because of a small phial that
he kept under his pillow. The spirit-familiar was able to steal this phial,
and in the middle of the session in the darkened room the phial sud-
denly landed on the floor with a thump. (Compare the strikingly simi-
lar seances described in Shaw 1975:61-65.)
The similarity between the ambience here and that of Tarim's hut is
immediately apparent. The client has come to the dukun, the request is
not for the healing or cure of some illness but for access to a world of
spirits in order magically to identify the cause of misfortune. True,
Tarim was being asked to perform an act of malign magic, whereas in
the case of Zohori it was simply a question of identifying a magical
agency; but in terms of the magical power, the use of objects, and the
notion of a spirit-familiar executing a task, there is a close resemblance.
Above all, the confidence with which the account was related and the
absolute credence given to the interpretation of events, both in terms
of accepting the explanation of misfortune and of understanding what
had occurred in the dukun's hut, suggest at the very least a common
universe of shared beliefs and perceptions.
Simple observation in the field of the way in which a discourse of
witchcraft is constructed, then, in these three examples would appear
to substantiate the realism and accuracy of the fictional accounts of
what people say they believe. What is described in the books would
appear, with some qualification, to correspond, more or less, to what
people imagine takes place in Indonesian society: the social and cogni-
tive contexts in which malign magic is observed to operate in the fiction
of the novels correspond to the situations observed, the discussions
that take place, and the general explanations offered.
However, there is another dimension to perceptions of evil and the
possession of occult powers in Indonesian society that is at the level of
not simply noting and believing in a realm of preternatural evil, but also
trying to explain it at a more profound philosophical and anthropologi-
cal level. That level of explanation lies within the domain of storytellers
who are very different from those discussed above, as we shall see.

A Storyteller's Exegesis of Evil

The story "Tersesat" ("Lost," in the physical and metaphorical
sense of the word), written in Sundanese by Ki Umbara, appeared in an
Indonesian translation by Ajip Rosidi in the journal Budaja Djaja in
January 1970. It tells the story of a young man, Agus, who leaves his
208 C . W . WATSON

village in Banten in West Java because his girlfriend has been forced to
marry a rich powerful villager. He is very bitter and, consumed by
anger, seeks revenge. Not long after leaving his village he falls in with a
mysterious stranger, who appears to have extraordinary powers and
who promises to help him. Together they go back to the village of the
stranger, and at this point the writer gradually constructs a portrait of
the village which leaves the reader in no doubt that, although clearly
the people there may have developed superhuman powers in terms of
physical ability and magical skills, they have acquired these at the
expense of their humanity and live at a wild, savage, and subhuman
level. After a period of initiation that involves both ascetic ritual and
the recitation of magical formulae, the young man, too, becomes
invulnerable and physically superhuman, and he sets out to return to
his village on his quest for vengeance. He comes across a group of cow-
herds tending some buffalo and is surprised when they suddenly call
out, "Macan! Macan!" ("Tiger! Tiger!"), gradually realizing that they
mean him. He is chased, but the spears they throw do not affect him.
Tired, he lies down to rest, but hears someone raising his voice aloud in
prayer. Automatically he repeats the prayer and the story ends as fol-
lows (63):

Setelah tudjuh kali, hatinja terasa mendjadi ketjil. Perasaannja

berubah. Rasa chewani hilang musnah, timbul rasa kemanusiaanja.
Sekarang ia merasa hatinja penuh dengan berbagai perasaan bersalah
karena sudah menjeleweng dari djalan jang benar, terseret oleh nafsu
sampai mau beladjar ilmu kelahiran. Sesudah ilmu itu diperolehnja,
kiranja ia tak bisa lagi bertjampur dengan manusia. Ilmu apapula itu!
Orang jang melagukan pupudjian di atas ranggon suaranja sudah tak
terdengar lagi. Ki Aguspun merasa ngantuk bukan buatan. Kuapnja
datang ber-tubi. Ia baru terdjaga ketika dibangunkan oleh ki Pemburu,
matahari sudah bersinar di arah timur.
"Siapakah udjang gerangan? Mengapa tidur di sini?" tanja ki Pem-
buru dengan heran.
"Saja orang . . . tersesat!" katanja sambil menggisik mata, lalu
menggeliat.

[After he had repeated it seven times, his heart felt as though it was
getting smaller. His feelings changed. The bestial feeling disappeared
without trace, there arose a feeling of humanness. Now he felt his heart
full of different feelings of guilt because he had diverged from the
proper path, carried away by passion to the point where he wanted to
learn a knowledge of supernatural power. After he had obtained that
power, it appeared that he could no longer mix with people. What
kind of knowledge was that?
Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature 209

The man who in the blind in the trees had offered up the prayer of
praise to God, his voice could no longer be heard. Ki Agus, too, felt
really tired. He yawned several times in succession. He was only alert
again when he was awoken by the Hunter, the sun was already shining
in the east.
"Who are you, then, my lad? Why are you sleeping here?" asked the
Hunter, surprised.
"I am someone . . . who has been lost," he said, rubbing his eyes,
and then he shivered.]

The allegory is particularly powerful and cogent, interweaving as it

does several levels of belief and understanding. Not only is there a very
careful manipulation of the structural opposition between human and
animal, conducted simultaneously at the level of physical reality and
philosophical principle, but the image of the tiger, which is crucial to
that opposition, arouses ambivalent emotions at a more visceral level
among Indonesians, who have especially mixed and uncertain feelings
about the animal which they perceive as potentially both sacred and
dangerous (Wessing 1986; Endicott 1970:32). One can, however, also
detect a criticism of all practice that promises power (or religious
knowledge) as a product of ascetic and, in terms of the moral perspec-
tive of the story, unnatural, behavior.
At the risk of oversimplifying these various strands of interpretation,
one can reduce the moral of the story to the sentiment that the surren-
der to emotion means a loss of that self-control which is the quintessen-
tial characteristic of humanity. To put it in a slightly different way, in
terms familiar to most Indonesianists, the surrender to emotions is the
defeat of akal by nafsu (see Siegel 1969). In this story the recourse to
malign magic and the occult is perceived as the product of someone
who is tersesat. Whether occult powers exist or not is left open: in no
sense is the story, any more than any other allegory, realistically believ-
able at the superficial level; but, on the other hand, the existence of the
occult is not categorically dismissed. At the level of religious belief,
however, the appeal to malign magic is seen as a rejection of religious
truth, and at a profounder existential level that religious truth itself is
seen to be predicated on a deeply intuitive grasp of what it is to be
human.
The use I have made of this last example from fiction differs from my
search for empirical examples in the first part of the chapter. There I
was concerned to look at the evidence of fictional case studies and then
to match them with evidence from the field, bearing in mind issues of
social and political context. Here I have drawn out what I take to be
the moral and philosophical themes within the text to show that expla-
210 C . W . WATSON

nations of evil and misfortune within Indonesian society can be offered

at different levels of sophistication.
The notion of an explanatory, exegetical text, the comparison
between fictional and social discourses, and the locating of structures of
fictional representation within a political context, all provide access to
ways of understanding the significance of witchcraft and sorcery in con-
temporary Indonesian society. Textually derived knowledge should
not, however, simply be regarded as complementing other sources of
understanding. There is of course complementarity, but beyond that
an engagement with texts allows a privileged and unique entry to an
understanding of indigenous perceptions.

N o t e and References
I wish to thank Nigel Phillips for several references in this chapter, and in
particular for reminding me of the dukun in Sitti Nurbaja. I also thank my wife,
Martina, for her help and for references—in particular, for drawing my atten-
tion to the episode in Lintang Kemukus Dini Hari.

Aveling, H. G. 1970. "Sitti Nurbaja": Some reconsiderations. Bijdrqgen totde

TaaL, Land- en Volkenkunde 126:2, with a comment by Taufik Abdullah.
Bhabha, Homi. 1984. Representation and the colonial text: A critical explora-
tion of some forms of mimeticism. In The theory of reading, ed. Frank
Gloversmith. Sussex: The Harvester Press.
Dimyati, Muhammad. 1935. Sitti Noerdjannah Atau Oesaha Tidak Sampai.
Solo: Lectuur Islam Indonesia.
Endicott, K. M. 1970. An analysis ofMalay magic. Oxford: Clarendon, Oxford
University Press.
Hellwig, Tineke. 1988. De Danseres van Dukuh Paruk: Uitverkoren en uitges-
toten. In Korrie Korevaart, ed., Vrouwen in tool entiteratuur.Amersfoort:
Acco, Academische Uitgeverij Amersfoort.
Jamil Bakar, Mursal Esten, Agustar Surin, and Busri. 1981. Sastra Lisan
Minangkabau. Jakarta: Pusat Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Bahasa,
Departmen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan.
Ki Umbara. 1970. Tersesat. BudajaDjaja, no. 20 (January): 50-63. Translated
by Ajip Rosidi.
Lubis, Mochtar. 1975. Harimau! Harimau! Jakarta: Pustaka Jaya.
Mofolo, Thomas. 1981 [1931], Chaka: An historical romance. Translated by
Daniel P. Kunene. London: Heinemann African Writers Series.
Plaatje, Sol T. 1978 [1930], Mhudi. London: Heinemann African Writers
Series.
Rusli, Marah. 1965 [1922], Sitti Nurbaja Jakarta: Balai Pustaka.
Shaw, William. 1975. Aspects of Malay magic. Kuala Lumpur: Muzium Negara.
Siegel, J. T. 1969. The rope cfGod. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Cal-
ifornia Press.
Malign Magic in Indonesian Literature 211

Skeat, W. W. 1972 [1900], Malay magic. New York: Benjamin Blom.

Spivak, G. C. 1987. In other worlds: Essays in cultural politics. London:
Methuen.
Sweeney, Amin. 1989. The Malay novelist: Social analyst or informant? Or
neither? Beview of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs. Double Issue.
Taufik Abdullah. See Aveling.
Tohari Ahmad. 1985. LintangKemukusDiniHart. Jakarta: Gramedia.
Tulis St. Sati. 1972 [1929]. Sengsara Membawa Nikmat. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka.
First edition 1929.
. 1932. Tidak Membalas Goena. Batavia Centrum: Balai Pustaka.
Wessing, R. 1986. The soul of ambiguity: The tiger in Southeast Asia. Centre for
Southeast Asian Studies. Monograph Series on Southeast Asia Special
Report No. 24. Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois.
 AUTHOR INDEX

Adriani, N., 147 Castañeda, C., 192

al-Attas, S. N., 189 Cedderoth, S., 16, 22
Anderson, B. R. O'G., 1 5 3 , 1 6 4 , 1 7 4 - Clammer, J., 14
175,187,189 Colson, A. C., 1 5 , 2 2
Arndt, P., 119,121 Crawford, J. K , 2 , 1 1 , 2 3
Atkinson, J. M., 175 Crick, M., 3 , 2 3 , 1 1 9 , 1 2 1
Aveling, H. G., 196, 210 Cushing, J. N., 6 7 , 7 5 - 7 6 , 79

Bachtiar, H. W., 124,132 Davis, R., 9 , 1 3 , 2 3 , 76-77, 79

Bader, H., 9 9 , 1 2 0 - 1 2 1 Dentan, R. K., 1 6 4 , 1 7 1 , 1 7 5
Bakar, J., 198,210 Dessaint, A. Y., 4 9 , 6 5
Barnes, J. A., 3 , 2 2 Dimyati, M., 197,210
BarojaJ. C., 1 1 - 1 2 , 2 2 Douglas, M., 1, 3 , 1 7 , 2 3 , 1 1 3 , 1 1 7 ,
Barton, R. F., 1 , 6 , 1 3 , 1 5 , 2 2 120-121,146,148,163-164,171,
de Beaufort, L. F., 96-97 175
Beidelman,T. O . , 9 5 , 9 7 , 1 3 7 , 1 4 7 Durkheim, E., 4 8 , 6 4 , 9 4
Benda-Beckmann, K. von, 137,148 Durrenberger, E. P., 9 , 4 9 - 5 8 , 6 0 - 6 6 ,
Bergh, R. R., 140,147-148 6 9 , 7 3 , 76, 78-80
Bhabha, H., 191,210
Bilmes, J. M., 4 2 , 4 4 Eberhardt, N., 68, 80
Blair, E. H., 21-22 Echols, J. M., 119,122
Bloch, M., 175 Eickelman, D., 175
Bourdieu, P., 175 Ellen, R. F., 4 , 1 3 , 1 8 , 2 3
Bowen, J. R., 1 2 , 1 3 6 , 1 5 4 , 1 7 3 , 1 8 0 , Endicott, K. M., 3 , 2 3 , 1 6 3 , 1 7 4 - 1 7 5 ,
184,186-187,-189-190 209-210
Brain, R., 9 5 , 9 7 Engel, D. M., 3 5 , 4 2 , 4 4
Brenneis, D. L., 180,190 Engelbrecht, W. A., 147-148
Burridge, K., 152,175 Errington, F., 164,175

213
214
Esterik, P. van, 153,176
Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 2-3,6,18,23,
48-49,66,79-80,94,120,135-
136,140,148,163,175
Favret-Saada, J., 2,11,23
Forth, G. L., 6-7, 23,99,101, 111,
120,122,163
Fortune, R. F., 20, 23
Fox, R., 3, 23
Frazer, J., 17-18
Freedman, M., 93,97
Geertz, C., 124,133,154,157,164,
173,175
Geschiere, P., 136,142,144,148
Gimlette, J. D.,14,20,23
Gluckman, M., 3-4,23
Golomb, L., 1, 7,10,12-13,15,17,
19,23,28-29, 33, 37, 39,41,45,
95,97,136,175
Gullick, J. M.,4,23
Haddon, A. C., 4
Hanks, L. M.,70, 80
Hartog,J.,7,14,24
Hefner, R. W., 153,173,175-176
Held, G. J., 147-148
Hellwig, T., 120, 200
Hessing, J., 147-148
Hobart, M., 5-6,175-176
Hood Salleh, 4,23
Horton, R., 3,23
Howe, L. E. A., 6,11,13,23,121-
122
Jacobs, H. T. T. M., 96-97
Jordaan, R. E., 174,176
de Josselin de Jong, P. E., 174,176
Jung, C., 8
Kate, H. F. E. ten, 147-148
Keeler, W., 173,176
Keesing, R., 175-176
Kessler, C. S., 164,174-176
Keuning, J., 140-141,148
Keyes, C. F., 14,24
Kirsch, A. T., 34,45
Author Index
KiUmbara, 207,210
Klausner, W. J., 42,45
Kluckhohn, C., 2,19,24
Koentjaraningrat, 124,133
Kohlbrugge, J. H. F., 20,24
Komin, S., 33,45
Kreemer, J., 188,190
Kruyt, A. C., 147-148
Laderman, C., 153,164,174,176
Lambek, M., 174,176
Larner, C., 2,11-12,24
Leach, E. R., 48-49,61-62,64,66,
113,122
Lehmann, A. C., 146,148
Lessa, W. A., 79-80
Lévi-Strauss, C., 19,24,155,174-176
Lévy-Bruhl, L., 18
Lewis, I. M., 39,45,174,176
Lieban, R. W., 1,6,10-12,16-17,
19-20,24,185,190
Lindenbaum, S., 163,172,177
Lubis, M., 197-200, 202-203,206,
210
Luhrmann, T. M., 17, 24
McAllister, C., 152,176
Macfarlane, A., 2,11,24
Mahasweta Devi, 192
Mair, L., 17,23,110,114,122
Malinowski, B., 20,24,136,148
Mangrai, S. S., 69, 80
Maran, L., 61,66
Martin, K., 96-97
Marwick, M. G., 2,4,6,11,17,24,
94,97,112,122,136,146,148
Middleton, J. F. M., 2, 24,115
Moeljatno, 147-148
Moerman, M., 69, 80
Mofolo, T., 193,210
Mohammed Taib bin Osman, 174,
176
Moore, S. F., 137,148
Myers, F., 180,190
Myers, J. E., 146,148
Nash, M., 64,66
Needham, R., 116,122
Author Index 215

Neu, J., 175-176 Stephen, M., 2 - 3 , 7 - 8 , 2 5

Nitibaskara, K , 5 , 8 , 2 1 Stivens, M., 152,177
Stresemann, E., 9 2 , 9 6 - 9 7
Obeyesekere, G., 157,176 Strijbosch, F., 137,148
Ong, A., 172,174, 1"6 Suchtelen, Jhr. B. C. C. M. M. van,
Orde-Browne, G., 2 2 , 2 4 147-148
Suwanlert, S., 3 7 , 4 5
Peletz, M. G., 1 3 , 1 6 , 1 9 , 1 5 2 , 1 5 3 , Sweeney, A., 191,211
156,164,173-177,188,190 Swift, M. G., 157,177
Pénard, W. A., 99,119-122 Szasz, T., 9 5 , 9 7
Phillips, H . P., 4 2 , 4 5
Piker, S., 4 2 , 4 5 Tambiah, S. J., 3 7 , 4 6 , 6 6 , 1 5 5 , 1 7 7
Plaatje, SolT., 193,210 Tannenbaum, N., 70-71, 73, 76-78,
Portier, K., 1, 5 , 1 1 , 2 1 , 2 5 , 1 2 6 , 1 4 8 80
Provencher, R., 1 5 , 2 3 , 1 6 8 , 1 7 7 Taufik Abdullah, 196,210-211
Taussig, M., 172,177
Raybeck, D., 164,177 Terwiel, B. J., 34,45, 77, 80
Resner, G., 7 , 1 4 , 2 4 Textor, R. B., 15, 34, 39,45
Reynolds, B., 4 , 2 4 Thomson, H . W., 1 4 , 2 0 , 2 3
Riedel, J. G. F., 9 2 , 9 7 Tichelman, G. L., 96-97
Rietschoten, C. H . van, 147-148 Tohari Ahmad, 2 0 0 , 2 0 2 , 2 1 1
Roberts, C. C., 22, 24 TulisSt.Sati, 196,211
Robertson, A., 21-22 Turner, V., 1 9 - 2 0 , 2 2 , 2 5 , 1 1 5 , 1 2 2 ,
Rosaldo, K , 1 6 4 , 1 7 5 , 1 7 7 , 1 8 0 , 1 9 0 192
Rosidi, A., 207 Tylor, E. B., 4 , 1 8
Rusli, M., 210
Verheijen, J. A., 99,122
Sahlins, M., 62, 66 Vogt, E. Z., 79-80
Schapera, I., 4 , 2 4
Schlegel, S. A., 13,25 Wallace, A. F. C., 9 5 , 9 7
Schneider, D. M., 3 , 2 5 Watson, C. W., 5, 21,173
Scott, Sir J. [Shway Yoe], 76, 80,175, Weber, M., 172
177 Weiner, A. B., 149-150,171,177
Sembiring, D., 143,148 Wessing, R., 209,211
Shadily, H . , 119,122 Westermark, G. D., 144,148
Shaw, W., 207,210 Whiting, B., 2 , 1 9
Siegel, J. T., 209-210 Wijngaarden, J. K., 147-148
Skeat, W. W., 3 , 2 5 , 1 8 5 - 1 8 6 , 1 8 8 , Wikan,U., 175,177
190,198,211 Wilson, C., 69, 80
Skinner, G. W., 34,45 Winstedt, R. O., 10, 25
Slaats, H . , 1, 5 , 1 1 , 2 1 , 2 5 , 1 2 6 , 1 4 8 Winter, E. H . , 2, 24
Snouck Hurgronje, C., 189-190 Woodward, M. R., 124,133
Somchintana, T. -R., 3 4 - 3 5 , 4 5
Sperber, D., 49, 66 Yengoyan, A. A., 164,177
Spiro, M., 1 3 , 2 5 , 6 3 - 6 4 , 6 6 , 70, 80,
121-122 Zelenietz, M., 2 , 4 - 5 , 2 5 , 1 4 2 , 1 4 4 ,
Spivak, G. C., 192,211 146-148,163,172,177
 SUBJECT INDEX

Note: A number of commonly occurring but conceptually relevant terms (particu-

larly spirit and magic) occur so frequently in the text that no useful purpose would
be served by indexing them.

Accusations of witchcraft and sorcery, Astrology, 31, 33, 75-76

3-4,14-15,17-18, 21,28, 34, Ayudhya, 27,29, 34
37-39,42-44,47, 53, 81,84-92, Azande, 120,163
94-95,99,108-110,115-116,
118,120-121,127,129,132,146, Balai Pustaka, 5,196-197,199
183,185; and insider/outsider Bali, 9 , 1 1 , 1 3 - 1 4 , 1 8 , 1 4 7 , 1 7 5
relations, 7,14-15,19, 38,94, Balinese, 6 - 7 , 1 0 , 1 2 , 1 2 1
106,114,117 Bangkok, 27,29-34, 36,41-12,44
Aceh, 179,184,189 Barotse, 4
Acquisitiveness, 60,62-63 Batak, 11. See also Karo Batak
Ailat, 3-4,137,139-141,151,193, Bomoh, 7 , 9 , 1 7 4
196,206 Bone-setting, 7,203
Adatrecht, 4 Buddhism, 11-14,28-29, 3 3 , 4 3 , 6 4 -
Affective theories, 18-19 65,68-73,75
Africa, 1 - 5 , 7 - 9 , 1 1 , 1 7 , 2 2 , 1 1 5 Burma (and Burmese), 13,64,69,
Agency, 9-10, 50,168 121
Allegory, 21, 209 Butonese, 15
Ambon, 87,92
Ambonese, 15, 81,96 Causality, theory of, 8, 58
Animals as agencies of malign magic, Cebu (andCebuano), 1,6-7,11-12,
10,91-92,100-101,103,106, 16,20,185
109,112,121,156 Cewa, 4
Anti-witchcraft movements, 3,22 China, 49,69
Arabic language, 154,188 Chinese, 15,41-12,49,90,150,156,
Asceticism, 6 164-166,172,204

217
218 Subject Index

Christianity, 11-13,15,22,70, 88,90, Hinduism, 11,124

92,94,96,137
Cognitive theories. See Intellectualist
theories
Colonialism (British and Dutch), 22,
108-109,116,136-141,146,172,
179-180,196; and law, 4-5,22,
146-147; Spanish, 17,22
Confessions, 1,109,124
Corpse-stealing, 104
Cosmology, 8-11,13-14,99,116-
117,124,135,183
Cuna, 174
Devil, 12,22, 55,158
Divination, 7, 55, 82, 84,90, 95,107,
194
Dreams, 102,138,173
Dukun, 7,125-130,132,150,152-
154,157-159,161,165,170-171,
173-174,194-200,202-207,210
Emotional states, 27, 33, 68, 81,95
English language, 68,156
Epistemology, 8-11,14
Eschatology, 99
Essentialism, 8,
Ethnic pluralism, 1,15
Etiology, 8-11,13,48,63,99
Europe, 2, 5,17
Evil, 7,9-14, 34,126,129,187,207-
210; -eye, 9
Exorcism, 7,13,29, 31-32, 35, 38,
41,43,157,182,185
Expressive language, 21. See also Meta-
phor
Flores, 6,21,99,119-121,147
Gayo, 12,179-190
Gossip, 34, 58,67
Healers and healing, 1, 7,12,17,19-
20, 30-31, 33,40-41, 51, 53, 55,
72, 76, 86, 89,92,107-108,147,
150-159,174,181-182,184-186,
189,203
Herbalism, 2, 33, 38, 53, 55,203
Hysteria, 31,95
Ifugao, 1,10,22
Indonesia (including Dutch East
Indies), 4-5, 81-97,99-123,135-
148,179-190; law of, 123,125,
179 (seealso Colonialism, and law);
literature of, 191-211
Intellectualist theories, 18, 21
Irian Jaya, 147. See also New Guinea
Islam, 1-13,15,22, 28-29, 38,43,
85-86, 89, 91-92,94,96,124,
137,151-152,154-155,158-160,
162-163,165,167,169,172,
179-190,197
Japanese, 180
Java, 16,108,123-133,139,147,154,
175
Javanese, 7,124,157,164,174,187,
203-204; syncretism, 124
Johore, 152
Kachin, 48-49,61,64
Kalinga, 13,15
Karens, 14, 52
Karma, 3,43-44,64, 73-74
Karo Batak, 136,143,146. See also
Batak
Kelantan, 9,28,164,175
Kerinci, 203-207
Khymers, 15
Kuala Lumpur, 166,168,172
Language, 21
Lao, 13, 37,69
Laos, 153
Law, modern 5. See also Colonialism,
and law; Indonesia, law of
Lisu, 6,9,47-66
Literalism, 20
Literature, popular, 4. See also Indone-
sia, literature of
Lombok, 16
Love magic, 7,29, 33-37,42,44,159,
195-196
Luzon, 15
Subject Index 219

Madura, 128,139 Police records, 124

Malays, 7 , 9 - 1 0 , 1 4 - 1 5 , 2 8 - 2 9 , 86, Polygamy, 35
119,149-178,184-185,188 Prostitution, 35
Malaya, 2 , 4 , 2 8 - 2 9 , 1 7 0 , 2 0 3 Psychiatry, 31
Mandari, 113 Psychoanalysis, 32
Manggarai, 99 Punishment for malign magic, 7,11,
Massage, 7, 38, 203 19,110,116-117,138,145-
Melaka, 172 146
Melanesia, 2-3, 5,14, 20
Mediums, 31, 33, 44,125,147. See also Rationality, 3, 5 , 8 , 1 7 - 1 8 , 2 0 , 9 4 ,
Shamanism 160,196
Mental illness, 31-33, 3 8 , 4 0 - 4 1 , 9 3 - Reciprocity, 48, 58,60,62-63
95. See also Neurosis
Mentawai, 147 Selangor, 172
Merit, 73-74 Sermngat, 3 , 9 , 1 5 7 , 1 8 3
Metaphor, 20-21 Seram, 15, 81-97
Metaphysics, 3 Schizophrenia, 19,95
Midwifery, 7,125,203 Shadow play, 9
Minangkabau, 151,164,193-196, Shariah, 4,137
203-204 Siamese, 27. See «to Thai
Moluccas, 81,91 Shamanism, 47, 51, 55,60,152-153,
Muslims. See Islam 158,171. See also Mediums
Shan, 64,67-80
Nage, 6 - 7 , 9 , 2 1 , 9 9 - 1 2 2 Singapore, 164-165,172
NegeriSembilan, 13,18-19,150-153, Skepticism, 32-33,120,153,205
157-158,164-165,172-174 Social: change, 11,49; control, 18-19,
Neopaganism, 17 20,93; tension, 15, 8 1 , 9 1 , 9 3
Neurosis, 19, 95 Sociological theories, 18,21
New Guinea, 4 - 5 , 2 2 , 1 3 6 , 1 3 9 , 1 4 4 , Songkhla, 27, 39
147. See also Irian Jaya; Melanesia; Sorcery. See Witch; Witchcraft and
Papua New Guinea sorcery
Newspapers and magazines, 1,21,123, Soul, 61,63,99,101-104,171,188;
128-132,141-142,146,200 stealing, 10
Northern Rhodesia, 4 Spells, 10,182,186,188,195,198,
Nosology, 16 203
Nuaulu, 6 , 1 0 , 1 2 - 1 5 , 1 9 - 2 0 , 81-97 Spirit possession, 32-33, 39,43,125,
152,156-158,173-175
Oceania, 8 - 9 Stillbirths, 9-10
Oracles, 2, 51 Sufism,185
Sulawesi, 175
Pali, 69 Sumatra, 151,164,179-190,196-
Papua New Guinea, 144,147. See also 197,203-204
New Guinea Sundanese, 204,207. See also West Java
Peranakan, 14 Symbolic: dualism, 3, 55,113; inver-
Philippines, 17,21-22 sion, 11,101
Poison, 5 4 , 9 6 , 1 0 5 , 1 4 0 , 1 4 7 , 1 5 2 -
155,156,158,168-169,183,188, Tamils, 156
198,200 Tengger, 174-175
220
Thai, 7,9,11-12,14-15,27-28,
49, 53
Thailand, 1-2, 7,13,16,47-80
Timor, 147
Trengganu, 164
Trobriand Islands, 149-150
Unconscious, 8, 32
Urbanism and urbanization, 16,17,
29,168,172; in Thailand, 27-15
Vietnam, 153
Wana, 175
Were-animals, 47-48, 50-51, 56,63,
163,203
West Java, 192,208. See also Sundanese
Witch: concept of, 116-117; finders,
107; image of, 100-102; killing, 9,
22,108,116,120-121,147
Subject Index
Witches, 67-69, 78-79; and sorcerers
compared, 50-54,63 (see also
Witchcraft and sorcery, terminol-
ogy); as spirits, 9
Witchcraft and sorcery: and anthropo-
logical theory, 17-21; and the law,
135-148; as an object of academic
study, 1-6; as a social problem, 3;
and social change, 15-17; and the
major religious traditions, 11-15
(see also Buddhism; Christianity;
Hinduism and Islam); beliefs (as
opposed to practice) 3,13-14,21,
125; in business, 34, 37,42; com-
pared (see Witches, and sorcerers
compared; Witchcraft and sorcery,
terminology); social epidemiology
of, 13-15; terminology, 6-9,
22,136; women in relation to,
34-35
CONTRIBUTORS

John K Bowen is Associate Professor, Department of Anthropol-

ogy, Washington University. He is the author of Sumatran Politics
and Poetics (1991) and has written several articles about religion
and politics in Indonesia.
E. Paul Durrenberger is Professor in the Department of Anthro-
pology at the University of Iowa. He is the author of several
books including Lisu Beligum (1989) and (with Gisli Pälsson) The
Anthropology of Iceland (1989).
Boy Ellen is Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology at the
University of Kent at Canterbury. He is the author of Cultural
Belations of Classification (1993) and Environment, Subsistence and
System (1982) and numerous articles on a variety of anthropologi-
cal topics.
Gregory Forth is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthro-
pology, University of Alberta. He is the author of Bindi: An Eth-
nographic Study of a Traditional Domain in Eastern Sumba (1981)
and several monographs and studies about eastern Indonesia.
Louis Golomb is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, George Mason Uni-
versity. He is the author of Brokers of Morality: Thai Ethnic Adap-
tation in a Malaysian Setting (1978) and An Anthropology of Curing
in Multiethnic Thailand (1985).
Bonny Nitibaskara lectures in the Department of Criminology at
the Universitas Indonesia. He is the author of several articles in
Indonesian on witchcraft and sorcery in Indonesia.

221
222 CONTRIBUTORS

Michael G. Peletz is Associate Professor of Anthropology in the

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Colgate University.
He is the author of A Share of the Harvest (1988) and several arti-
cles on Malaysia.
Karen Portier works at the Instituut voor Volksrecht of the Catho-
lic University of Nijmegen. She and her husband, Herman Slaats,
co-authored Upholders of the law and Practitioners of Magic: A
Social and Legal Problem in Indonesia.
Herman Slaats is Senior Lecturer at the Instituut voor Volksrecht
of the Catholic University of Nijmegen. He and his wife, Karen
Portier, have recendy completed Traditional Decision-making and
Law: Institutions and Processes in an Indonesian Context (1992).
Nicola Tannenbaum is Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the
Social Relations Department of Lehigh University. She has writ-
ten several articles on the Shan and, together with Paul Durren-
berger, wrote Analytical Perspectives m Shan Agriculture and Village
Economics (1990).
C. W. Watson is Senior Lecturer in South-East Asian Studies at
the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Kent.
He is the author of Kinship, Property and Inheritance in Kerinci,
Central Sumatra (1992) and several articles on modern Indonesian
society.
 Production Notes
Composition and paging were done on the
Quadex Composing System and typesetting
on the Compugraphic 8400 by the design
and production staff of University of
Hawaii Press.
The text and display typeface is Galliard.
Offset presswork and binding were done by
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Text paper is Writers RR Offset, basis 50.