keris and spirit

Raden Usman Djogja · 6th May 2007, 05:45 AM

I would like to share, discuss and ask your opinion regarding spirit and keris.
Some people believe that the spirit lay in a keris. I do not want to raise questions on it (exactly). Something exists because someone beleives.

What I want to share is based on my own experiences. Firstly, I have met with uncountable person who posses keris. Most of them had spiritual stories according to their kerises.

Secondly, I have some kerises. Whenever meeting with someone who felt having sixth sense, sometimes, I showed him/her one of my kerises, then, listening his/her opinion. Case by case. In general, they agreed that there was something inside. However, in detail, their explanations varied.

I tried to get my own explanation on it without doubting their words. Someday, when I turned on cd player, suddently, I realized that by using cd or dvd everyone could listen songs or watch films (lively). However, nobody believes there is a spirit inside cd or dvd.

I just imagine that keris is as cd/dvd and a person who posseses the sixth sense is cd/dvd player.

A. G. Maisey · 6th May 2007, 11:47 PM

G'day Raden.

I am not Javanese. I am a 66 year old Australian, a risk and audit professional, and strongly nationalistic.

I also have studied the art, history, society and culture of Jawa for over 50 years, I have studied the keris specifically for almost as long, I have spent time in Jawa most years since the 1960's, my wife is from Jawa and I am the pupil of Empu Suparman Supawijaya (Alm.)

I will not present an opinion in the matter you have raised, but I will briefly outline several situations for your consideration.

My son-in-law is from an old Solo priyayi family.His brother-in-law is an engineer, recently retired. My son-in-law's sister died immediately after her husband retired. The husband then searched around for something to fill his time, and he discovered keris. Prior to this he had shown no interest at all in keris.He joined a keris discussion club, and within the space of about 7 or 8 years has put together a collection of about 60 or so keris.He has these keris sorted into two classifications:- one lot of keris were previously owned by kyai-kyai, the other lot of keris were previously owned by pangeran-pangeran. He discovered who had previously owned these keris by meditation and dreaming. A few of these keris contain powerful entities which assist him in various ways. Again, the existence of these entities was revealed by meditation and dreaming.It is of interest to note that several of the keris that have previously belonged to kyai, or pangeran, or that contain powerful entities, are current era production from Madura.

Over the years I have been given a number of keris. Several of these keris were given to me when I agreed to accept them from the previous owners after they had been advised to get rid of these keris because they were causing misfortune , or were evil. In one case several violent deaths were attributed to one of these keris, in another case several failed businesses were attributed to the keris. I think the number of "evil" keris that I currently hold is somewhere in the order of 8 or 10 keris. I have never suffered any misfortunes or ill luck during the period I have held these keris, that I could not put down to my own stupidity, or lack of preparation and planning.

I know of two instances of keris that were bought in a normal market transaction by a dukun (actually two separate dukuns) and that after suitable preparation of a provenance in one case, and a stage setting in the other were onsold to the dukuns' clients as powerful talismans. Until today one of the people who recieved this powerful keris still has absolute faith in the power of this keris to protect his house from misfortune.

I have attended an event in company with a number of Javanese people where a man changed himself into a tiger. All the Javanese people saw this happen. I only saw a man who began to behave like a tiger. It was explained to me that I could not see the tiger because the spirit of the tiger did not want to reveal itself to me.

Now, on the other hand I have heard a toke talking when people with me heard only the sound of the toke.

I have had some keris and tombak given to me after a woman was visited by her dead husband in a dream, told where to find these keris and tombak and how to dispose of them.

I know of instances where somebody has known of things happening in another place, and told of it, long before finding out that those things did in fact happen.

I am not a non-believer in the paranormal, but in any case where it appears that something paranormal does exist it is perhaps as well to consider all factors associated with this paranormal event before accepting that the event has been generated by factors or elements that cannot be traced to a human source.

Michel · 7th May 2007, 10:51 PM

Hi Raden,
I am a Swiss engineer who lived for a few years in Malaysia and Thailand and traveled in the countries around. I am collecting kris and other Asian Edge weapons. I am nowhere close to Alan in terms of knowledge about kris but I have lived an experience that still puzzle me with one of my kris.
Having returned to Switzerland at my retirement, we bought a house build in 1721 in a local village. Old houses are usually well situated with little or no influence of the underground water system that can affect your sleeping pattern. Having difficulties in sleeping, my wife and I called a geobiologist of the local Polytechnic University to measure, with recognized instruments, the possible underwater stream and the so called Hartmann network. (One should not be sleeping with a crossing of the network on the beds. So at least goes the theory !) He came, made his measures, made his drawings, went through all rooms, measuring and drawing. In my office are stored in an Indonesian basket about 50 krisses. He was turning and turning in this office and said: there is en "entity" in this room that is bothering me and my measures.
So I asked : What is an entity ? Where is it ? Why does it trouble your measures ?
He answered : I feel a very powerful presence somewhere in this room that bother me but not my instruments.
And he went towards my krisses and asked : what is this ? He had never seen a kris before.
So I took the krisses one after the other and he said : no, no , not this one, until I took one of the first kris I bought in Kuala Lumpur, not very nice, nothing special, it is traditional sumatra blade and Palembang sheath and grip, and said: this is it, very powerful, I can feel the entity irradiating at 4 meter distance.
So I asked: good , bad, what does it do ? I have never felt anything special about that kris !
He would not answer and said simply : do not play with it, I will take care of this entity and divert its force.
I paid him what I owed him and we never saw him again. My kris is sleeping with all my other edge weapons and neither my self nor anybody else could identify this kris as special or feel anything about it.
I think that people, like myself, who have been educated in a very technical and materialistic world do not have enough sensitivity to feel anything that we cannot see or measure and we keep seeing people behaving like tigers where others will really see tigers (As Alan explained)
What still puzzles me is that an engineer, trained and educated in Switzerland, not knowing the existence of kris, could come in my home and point to one of them and tell me that weapon has a difference, it has an entity (whateve it means).
In Africa, my helpers could hear and see many things I could not. Were these things real ?
What I cannot see and measure does not bothers me.
However, I cannot measure and see the thoughts of others, but they can bother me !!

A. G. Maisey · 7th May 2007, 11:51 PM

I can give you a parrallel story.

My wife's uncle was a "spiritual advisor" to President Sukarno, and when Sukarno was replaced, President Suharto then relied upon his services. He was a paranormal who could distant view, who made predictions that had a fairly high success rate , and he gave advice as to the best time and place to undertake various activities. He was a strange little man. Looked something like a frog, and in his house he had a "power room", that was full of keris and paintings of himself. He did have enormous presence and force of personality, and there are a lot of stories in the family about some of the things he did, such as facing down an entire battle group of insurgents during the struggle for freedom, insurgents who had just been on a murder rampage, and telling them to go home and leave his neighbourhood alone. Apparently they dispersed and all shuffled off in different directions as if they did not know what they were doing.

Anyway, about 20 years ago Uncle Jan visited us in Australia, and naturally we spent time going through my collection. When he handled one particular keris he could not hold it and threw it to the floor yelling "panas, panas, panas" (panas=hot). He then proceeded to direct me to get it out of the house and get rid of it because it was more evil than he could talk about.

Now the peculiar thing is this:- some time before this incident I was living in a different house and was visited by a Hungarian gentleman who was a psychic and who had a record for doing things like find the bodies of murdered people. He had never seen a keris before seeing mine, and he had no idea what they were. When he handled the keris that Uncle Jan had handled some years later, it flew from his hands and hit the opposite wall. He immediately left the room, would not touch that keris again and requested that I take the keris out of the house while he was there. He would not talk about what he felt.

When I brought this keris into my house for the first time there is a possibility that it moved from where I believe I placed it to a different place on the floor.

I still have this keris, I feel absolutely nothing from it, in fact, I rather like it, it not a keris that I would ever pass on to somebody else.

During my life I have had custody of literally thousands of keris, and I have handled many thousands more. I have never, ever had any sort of unpleasant feeling from a keris, but I sometimes have had a warm, comfortable feeling when handling a keris.

Raden Usman Djogja · 8th May 2007, 06:30 AM

Thank you, Alan & Michel, for sharing stories and experiences. To me, your stories broden my knowledge of keris.

Another story I would like to share. In 2005, I visited Empu Djeno in Yogyakarta. Some people believed that he was the last Empu left in the modern Yogyakarta. At that time, I ordered him to make a keris for me. Expected, that keris would be finished up at the end of the year 2008. Unfortunately, few months ago, I got bad news that Empu Djeno passed away. Now, nothing I can do for knowing whether the keris has finished or not, because, at this moment, I live in Africa.

Even till now, I am still eager to find a small meteorite for keris material. Friends, can you inform me where I can get a genuine meteorite.

Alan, as a pupil of late Empu Suparman, would you please to share your experiences in making a keris, especially, the untold ritual process? Thank you in advance.

A. G. Maisey · 8th May 2007, 09:20 AM

Forgive me Raden, but I do not think that I can comply with your request.

The physical process of making a keris is well documented, and I do not think that my repetition of it would serve any purpose, however if you have any specific queries on any particular part of the process, I am willing to try to answer your specific question.

Regarding ritual and mental preparation, I would prefer not to make any comment at all. I am sure that if you reflect upon this you will understand why.

kai · 8th May 2007, 09:34 AM

Hello Raden,

Quote:

Even till now, I am still eager to find a small meteorite for keris material. Friends, can you inform me where I can get a genuine meteorite.

Obtaining meteorite of the right quality is pretty easy these days. Once you know what you need exactly, just check ebay/etc. and your bring your wallet.

However, the major problem will likely be to find a skilled pandai keris who is able and willing to work with meteorite material...

I'd recommend to check out old threads on this forum like this one:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=2033

Use the search function:
http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/search.php?

Don't forget to also tap the old forum:
http://www.vikingsword.com/cgi-bin/s...ntro&default=1

http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001122.html

Regards,
Kai

6th May 2007, 05:45 AM	#1
Raden Usman Djogja Member Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 199	keris and spirit I would like to share, discuss and ask your opinion regarding spirit and keris. Some people believe that the spirit lay in a keris. I do not want to raise questions on it (exactly). Something exists because someone beleives. What I want to share is based on my own experiences. Firstly, I have met with uncountable person who posses keris. Most of them had spiritual stories according to their kerises. Secondly, I have some kerises. Whenever meeting with someone who felt having sixth sense, sometimes, I showed him/her one of my kerises, then, listening his/her opinion. Case by case. In general, they agreed that there was something inside. However, in detail, their explanations varied. I tried to get my own explanation on it without doubting their words. Someday, when I turned on cd player, suddently, I realized that by using cd or dvd everyone could listen songs or watch films (lively). However, nobody believes there is a spirit inside cd or dvd. I just imagine that keris is as cd/dvd and a person who posseses the sixth sense is cd/dvd player.

6th May 2007, 11:47 PM	#2
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,892	G'day Raden. I am not Javanese. I am a 66 year old Australian, a risk and audit professional, and strongly nationalistic. I also have studied the art, history, society and culture of Jawa for over 50 years, I have studied the keris specifically for almost as long, I have spent time in Jawa most years since the 1960's, my wife is from Jawa and I am the pupil of Empu Suparman Supawijaya (Alm.) I will not present an opinion in the matter you have raised, but I will briefly outline several situations for your consideration. My son-in-law is from an old Solo priyayi family.His brother-in-law is an engineer, recently retired. My son-in-law's sister died immediately after her husband retired. The husband then searched around for something to fill his time, and he discovered keris. Prior to this he had shown no interest at all in keris.He joined a keris discussion club, and within the space of about 7 or 8 years has put together a collection of about 60 or so keris.He has these keris sorted into two classifications:- one lot of keris were previously owned by kyai-kyai, the other lot of keris were previously owned by pangeran-pangeran. He discovered who had previously owned these keris by meditation and dreaming. A few of these keris contain powerful entities which assist him in various ways. Again, the existence of these entities was revealed by meditation and dreaming.It is of interest to note that several of the keris that have previously belonged to kyai, or pangeran, or that contain powerful entities, are current era production from Madura. Over the years I have been given a number of keris. Several of these keris were given to me when I agreed to accept them from the previous owners after they had been advised to get rid of these keris because they were causing misfortune , or were evil. In one case several violent deaths were attributed to one of these keris, in another case several failed businesses were attributed to the keris. I think the number of "evil" keris that I currently hold is somewhere in the order of 8 or 10 keris. I have never suffered any misfortunes or ill luck during the period I have held these keris, that I could not put down to my own stupidity, or lack of preparation and planning. I know of two instances of keris that were bought in a normal market transaction by a dukun (actually two separate dukuns) and that after suitable preparation of a provenance in one case, and a stage setting in the other were onsold to the dukuns' clients as powerful talismans. Until today one of the people who recieved this powerful keris still has absolute faith in the power of this keris to protect his house from misfortune. I have attended an event in company with a number of Javanese people where a man changed himself into a tiger. All the Javanese people saw this happen. I only saw a man who began to behave like a tiger. It was explained to me that I could not see the tiger because the spirit of the tiger did not want to reveal itself to me. Now, on the other hand I have heard a toke talking when people with me heard only the sound of the toke. I have had some keris and tombak given to me after a woman was visited by her dead husband in a dream, told where to find these keris and tombak and how to dispose of them. I know of instances where somebody has known of things happening in another place, and told of it, long before finding out that those things did in fact happen. I am not a non-believer in the paranormal, but in any case where it appears that something paranormal does exist it is perhaps as well to consider all factors associated with this paranormal event before accepting that the event has been generated by factors or elements that cannot be traced to a human source.

7th May 2007, 10:51 PM	#3
Michel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Switzerland Posts: 139	Hi Raden, I am a Swiss engineer who lived for a few years in Malaysia and Thailand and traveled in the countries around. I am collecting kris and other Asian Edge weapons. I am nowhere close to Alan in terms of knowledge about kris but I have lived an experience that still puzzle me with one of my kris. Having returned to Switzerland at my retirement, we bought a house build in 1721 in a local village. Old houses are usually well situated with little or no influence of the underground water system that can affect your sleeping pattern. Having difficulties in sleeping, my wife and I called a geobiologist of the local Polytechnic University to measure, with recognized instruments, the possible underwater stream and the so called Hartmann network. (One should not be sleeping with a crossing of the network on the beds. So at least goes the theory !) He came, made his measures, made his drawings, went through all rooms, measuring and drawing. In my office are stored in an Indonesian basket about 50 krisses. He was turning and turning in this office and said: there is en "entity" in this room that is bothering me and my measures. So I asked : What is an entity ? Where is it ? Why does it trouble your measures ? He answered : I feel a very powerful presence somewhere in this room that bother me but not my instruments. And he went towards my krisses and asked : what is this ? He had never seen a kris before. So I took the krisses one after the other and he said : no, no , not this one, until I took one of the first kris I bought in Kuala Lumpur, not very nice, nothing special, it is traditional sumatra blade and Palembang sheath and grip, and said: this is it, very powerful, I can feel the entity irradiating at 4 meter distance. So I asked: good , bad, what does it do ? I have never felt anything special about that kris ! He would not answer and said simply : do not play with it, I will take care of this entity and divert its force. I paid him what I owed him and we never saw him again. My kris is sleeping with all my other edge weapons and neither my self nor anybody else could identify this kris as special or feel anything about it. I think that people, like myself, who have been educated in a very technical and materialistic world do not have enough sensitivity to feel anything that we cannot see or measure and we keep seeing people behaving like tigers where others will really see tigers (As Alan explained) What still puzzles me is that an engineer, trained and educated in Switzerland, not knowing the existence of kris, could come in my home and point to one of them and tell me that weapon has a difference, it has an entity (whateve it means). In Africa, my helpers could hear and see many things I could not. Were these things real ? What I cannot see and measure does not bothers me. However, I cannot measure and see the thoughts of others, but they can bother me !!

7th May 2007, 11:51 PM	#4
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,892	I can give you a parrallel story. My wife's uncle was a "spiritual advisor" to President Sukarno, and when Sukarno was replaced, President Suharto then relied upon his services. He was a paranormal who could distant view, who made predictions that had a fairly high success rate , and he gave advice as to the best time and place to undertake various activities. He was a strange little man. Looked something like a frog, and in his house he had a "power room", that was full of keris and paintings of himself. He did have enormous presence and force of personality, and there are a lot of stories in the family about some of the things he did, such as facing down an entire battle group of insurgents during the struggle for freedom, insurgents who had just been on a murder rampage, and telling them to go home and leave his neighbourhood alone. Apparently they dispersed and all shuffled off in different directions as if they did not know what they were doing. Anyway, about 20 years ago Uncle Jan visited us in Australia, and naturally we spent time going through my collection. When he handled one particular keris he could not hold it and threw it to the floor yelling "panas, panas, panas" (panas=hot). He then proceeded to direct me to get it out of the house and get rid of it because it was more evil than he could talk about. Now the peculiar thing is this:- some time before this incident I was living in a different house and was visited by a Hungarian gentleman who was a psychic and who had a record for doing things like find the bodies of murdered people. He had never seen a keris before seeing mine, and he had no idea what they were. When he handled the keris that Uncle Jan had handled some years later, it flew from his hands and hit the opposite wall. He immediately left the room, would not touch that keris again and requested that I take the keris out of the house while he was there. He would not talk about what he felt. When I brought this keris into my house for the first time there is a possibility that it moved from where I believe I placed it to a different place on the floor. I still have this keris, I feel absolutely nothing from it, in fact, I rather like it, it not a keris that I would ever pass on to somebody else. During my life I have had custody of literally thousands of keris, and I have handled many thousands more. I have never, ever had any sort of unpleasant feeling from a keris, but I sometimes have had a warm, comfortable feeling when handling a keris.

8th May 2007, 06:30 AM	#5
Raden Usman Djogja Member Join Date: May 2007 Posts: 199	Thank you, Alan & Michel, for sharing stories and experiences. To me, your stories broden my knowledge of keris. Another story I would like to share. In 2005, I visited Empu Djeno in Yogyakarta. Some people believed that he was the last Empu left in the modern Yogyakarta. At that time, I ordered him to make a keris for me. Expected, that keris would be finished up at the end of the year 2008. Unfortunately, few months ago, I got bad news that Empu Djeno passed away. Now, nothing I can do for knowing whether the keris has finished or not, because, at this moment, I live in Africa. Even till now, I am still eager to find a small meteorite for keris material. Friends, can you inform me where I can get a genuine meteorite. Alan, as a pupil of late Empu Suparman, would you please to share your experiences in making a keris, especially, the untold ritual process? Thank you in advance.

8th May 2007, 09:20 AM	#6
A. G. Maisey Member Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 6,892	Forgive me Raden, but I do not think that I can comply with your request. The physical process of making a keris is well documented, and I do not think that my repetition of it would serve any purpose, however if you have any specific queries on any particular part of the process, I am willing to try to answer your specific question. Regarding ritual and mental preparation, I would prefer not to make any comment at all. I am sure that if you reflect upon this you will understand why.