Pawakan

[Montino Bourbon]

You used the word “Thread”. I feel that this word, as you use it, is huge. Is there a place where I can get info on this ‘thread’?

You’ve seen the Keris with Petruk, and very fine ‘sungginan’ that I found in a pawn shop; I had dreams about it before I bought it. I totally relate to ‘soul’ in an object. Musical instruments can have a huge load of that. I’ve got a few, and when you pick them up you know in very few minutes whether you have A- an instrument, B- a VERY FINE instrument, and C- something that will have an incredible effect, a thing that can touch the hardest heart and heal the worst pain. I’m lucky to have a few of those, and the ones I’m fortunate enough to be a custodian of told me they were my friends within a few minutes of touching them. And their appearance? They are all beautifully made, perfect in shape, proportion, material, and execution. None of these have any special decoratio; they are fully functional. And yes, I talk to them: “Get in tune, you sob, or I’ll sell you to a collector who will put you on his wall!”

[A. G. Maisey]

The thread I mentioned is the force of nature that binds all things in creation.

Some people will think of this thread as the Naga, others will think of the thread as God, perhaps neither of these concepts are adequate, they are just pegs to hang a thought on, something to help focus.

Perhaps our minds are too limited to grasp the idea of a natural force that flows through everything in creation, but if we pause for a moment, we empty our mind and think of perhaps a pumpkin, then focus on the stem of the pumpkin, on the stem we will see tiny hairs, focus on one of those hairs and continue that focus until there is nothing but the hair, this might open the door that will permit us to feel the one binding thread that holds the cosmos together.

I use pumpkins, others use something else, I believe a bowl of water is good.

That thread is perhaps beyond understanding, but for some of us, it is not beyond feeling.

[Montino Bourbon]

In any aspect of art, there is both “knowing“ and “feeling “. and dealing with such things as “Tosan Aji” is clearly a blend of both. Thank you for your reply.

[David]

Montino, if i might resort to a somewhat over used pop cliché, Use the Force Luke!

[A. G. Maisey]

Montino, when I initially used the word "thread", what I said was this:-

" the thread runs through everything in creation"

the idea is that everything in creation is connected.

I was not talking just about keris or other tosan aji.

the wanda or personality of a keris is something that is felt, but that personality is not a part of the classification system that we call tangguh. Tangguh is no more than a rational system of evaluation that we use to classify a keris. That system relies upon appraising certain characteristics of a keris, in accordance with established parameters.

It is an opinion of the applicable classification or group that a keris will fit into. There is an element of feeling in this appraisal, but it is not a spiritual element, it is a physical element, for example, how heavy does it feel? what is the texture of the material? This sort of thing, it is not anything to do with our feelings about whether it makes us feel negative or positive or as if a demon has been set free.

Art is not a part of the equation.

[jagabuwana]

Hello Alan. Sooner or later I knew I'd be back here with more questions.

I have been reflecting on two keris forms - on one side the rather muscular form of old Banten or Bali keris with luk that we know and love, and more modern Javanese classifications like Surakarta.

Both are recognisably part of the modern keris form as we know it, but both have a very different overall impression and feeling to them.

If I'm not mistaken, the Surakarta classification can be described as 'brave', among other descriptions. Is this brave as in berani (BI) or wani (BJ)? If so I think I can mentally or emotionally reconcile the appearance with the description. Likewise, other words that come to mind for me gravitate around words like gentlemanly, chivalrous, sartorial, high-cultured.

Whereas for Banten, gentlemanly or sartorial doesn't apply at all. The refinement and elegance is in its execution but not its form as something I try to imagine as personified.

* Without claiming to know how 'wanda' is used by ahli keris, am I sort of approaching the right idea for what that is when I describe things like this?

* When new regal classifications like Surakarta become developed and settled, is there any thinking in-advance by its contributors about what kind of feelings and impressions the keris' form should impart on someone?

* Do the impressions and invoked feelings related to a keris classification say something about how its patrons see themselves, or wish to be seen?

[A. G. Maisey]

This question seems to revolve around the idea of "feeling" as it applies to a keris.

The way I was taught to understand this idea was that the feeling generated by a keris is similar to the feeling generated by a man, that is to say, that the same man can generate different feelings in different people.

For example a person can generate a feeling of fear or anxiety in somebody, but in others he could well generate a feeling of kindness & security.

So the feeling between two people depends upon the mental state of each of those people. That mental state has been built upon the life experience of each of the parties involved.

In a society that has a strong underlying structure of animism & ancestor worship the idea is present that all things have a life force, even inanimate objects, such as rocks & places can have a life force, but that life force is less than the life force of recognisably living things, and each living thing exists within a hierarchy where , for example, a dog has more of this life force than a canary, a horse more than a dog, a human being more than a horse.

So, to generate feeling, a life force must exist.

In the belief systems upon which our modern societies are built, no life force is recognised unless it can be observed:- rocks do not move, they are empty of any life force, when grandpa dies, he is no longer breathing, his shell is empty, he has no life force, a keris is just a lump of metal, it has no life force.

But the animist belief system knows that there is a life force flowing through everything that holds the universe together. Ancestor worship recognises that grandpa is still there, he has just moved into a variant existence.

So people see the world in different ways, and these different ways are founded upon the environment where they have learnt to understand the world around them, and are moderated by their experiences within & outside of that environment.

The feeling generated by a keris is not dependent upon the keris, it is dependent upon the person who is observing or trying to interact with the keris.

Empu Suparman believed that there were three levels in learning to understand the keris, level one was to understand the features, level two was to understand the form, level three was to learn how to understand the feeling.

Included in the first, very basic level of understanding is the learning of how to apply the ideas of the tangguh system. Empu Suparman was of the opinion that it took many years to gain an understanding of tangguh, and most people never gained this understanding & certainly did not progress past it.

In level two there are two major ideas that need to be addressed, the first is guwaya, the word "guwaya" is the same word that we use to refer to a person's complexion, so it means the complexion of the keris, this in turn means that we need to be able to gain an understanding of the true guwaya of the keris, even when it is obscured by dirt & neglect. In other words, we need to be able to read what we cannot clearly see.

The second thing that must be achieved in level two of understanding is how to detect the feeling generated by a keris. It is very important to remember that not all keris generate a feeling, & even where a keris might generate a strong feeling in one person, it might not necessarily generate the same feeling in another person.

In level three of understanding, the master, or true ahli keris, will be able to detect the feeling of the keris even if he cannot see it, he will understand the feeling generated by the keris from vibration alone. The impression that the true ahli keris receives will be clear and not subject to doubt.

I have a little personal story that relates to level two & three of understanding that I think might clarify the idea of "feeling".

In about 1970 I had a neighbour who possessed --- for want of a better word --- mystic powers. He had a long connection with police in the area of being able to approximately locate people who were missing or dead in the surrounding bushland, & he had other tricks in his repertoire.

We sometimes visited each other, on the occasion of one visit I brought out a few keris for him to look at. One of the keris he attempted to handle flew from his hands as soon as he picked it up and it hit the wall of the room. This particular keris had on one occasion moved from where I had placed it to a different place, at that time I believed that I had simply forgotten where I had put it.

OK, an unusual happening. Fast forward to about 1983. I had a very distant relative who had been a spiritual advisor to President Sukarno, he was a recognised mystic in his community and had a record of being associated with inexplicable events --- for example telling the city police to free somebody whom my relative believed was innocent of that of which he was accused, and the police did open the door and let the accused man leave the cells.

This spiritually empowered gentleman visited my house in Sydney in about 1983, he was very much interested in keris, and the first thing he did was to ask to look at the keris I had in my possession.

To cut a long story short, when he got to the same keris that had flown from the hands of my neighbour ten or twelve years previously, he immediately dropped it, stepped away from it, exclaimed "panas, panas, panas" (hot, hot, hot) left the room and asked me to take the keris out of the house until after he had returned to his hotel. He told me that this was a very evil , very bad keris & that I should get rid of it immediately, preferably by throwing it into the Parramatta River.

I did not get rid of it, I still have it, & I have always rather liked this keris, if I handle it I get a very faint warm, comfortable & relaxed sensation, no feelings of dread or anxiety, just comfortable.

There is the understanding of keris feeling:- it depends upon the person, not the keris by itself, but the interaction of the keris with the person.

So Jaga, you need to learn tangguh, guwaya, wanda, then you might be able to learn how to feel a keris. In fact, you've probably got a slight head start on many people because of your heritage. The complete ballgame shouldn't take more than about 50 years or so, if you really put your mind to it.