Mountain Mystic

Mbah Maridjan. Do you remember a few posts back I mentioned the man who is watching over Mt.Merapi? Click on the title above to read a little more about him.

The belief in magic and other worldly forces is still a very common thing in Southeast Asian cultures. I'm running into this alot as I try to write this thesis of mine, and even just in day to day chatter with friends and local people in the places I visit. Its interesting because the degree of belief, as well of the scope of it varies from person to person. I was talking with a couple of friends who had heard a local urban legend about a couple of guys who walk around one of the local malls effectively hypnotizing people against their will and then compelling them to take large sums of money out of the ATM and give it to them.
When they were telling me this story, my predictable American response was: Did these guys have a gun? A knife?
The response:
No, it was black magic. *insert friend rolling her eyes at me here* The problem with you westerners is that you'll only believe things based on facts.
My response: You say that like it's a bad thing.

But it's serious stuff to some people here. And in Java, even more so. As I read and talk more
with scholars about some of the events that occured during the time period I'm writing my thesis on, I am seeing even more of this, and just how serious it is to people there. When I was in Jakarta, I met with a couple of Western scholars who are very scientifc in their approach to their study. Then I met with a couple of well respected local scholars. In both cases, the discussion with them was threaded with references to supernatural forces that could underlie some recent historical events. In many ways the discussion with them was more important than the discussions with the western scholars because their point of view is shared by people all over Indonesia and even if mysticism didn't underlie the events themselves, it most certainly plays a large part in people's responses to those events. As a westerner it's both fascinating and at the same time difficult to accurately represent in my writing due to my lack of belief in such things.

In Chinese traditions, it is a different type of belief, but in many ways it could be seen to be stronger and more mainstream than that of the Malays and Hindu's here. In the case of the Chinese, it's more about having your face and you palms read, or your home and office arranged with the proper fung shui, or any number of other things. Even with my training in Shiatsu and Eastern medicine, I still find alot of it hard to believe, but it doesn't matter if I believe it or not. To some people here, it is very very real, and they will travel a long ways and pay a lot of money to see a fortune teller who has a good reputation. Not everyone believes these things but many do. And to them, you'd have more luck arguing that the moon is made of blue cheese than you would suggesting that there is any reason not to believe what a fortune teller tells you.