Mantras keris and empu

[Seerp Visser]

Very interesting discussion about the mantra's and the "secrets"of the keris.

I like to react on some of the statements,

Pusaka
One teacher said to me what you know makes you unique, giving it away is giving away your uniqueness.

As teacher forging at the Academy of Arts in Antwerp Belgium (retired), i can understand what your teacher means, but my experience is different. Giving my know-how away, i think, made many other people more unique. I myself don't have the feeling that i lost anything of my own.

Here in Belgium we have another saying "When you learn a monkey climbing, it climbs over you". In fact, when i see the work what some of my students make these days, i admire their work and i think they surpassed me. This gives me a very satisfying feeling.

Especially for the forging of a keris, to my opinion, there is no problem to learn somebody where he asks for. The information you give can only be useful to somebody, on the moment he reaches the point of development where the given information can help him further on the way.
Somebody starting to learn the way a keris is forged, must be a quite good blacksmith anyway and still needs some years practice to come to the point where he is capable to forge his first "acceptable" keris.

Alam Shaka
You do not give information to people who do not have sufficient knowledge to understand what" you have given them. You do not give the key"

I think, every blacksmith trying to forge a keris will have to go a long way and i hope for him that he will find "The Key". To my opinion to find the key is something you only can do yourself, after a long way of stumbling.

I did not forge a keris myself, but i am studying the forging of a lot of five keris, forged by the empu Karja di Krama in 1904. The work was attended by Dr. Groneman who made an article about the work, what was published in 1910.
Dr. Groneman was a medicine and quite precise. He made an extensive description of the work. I could learn quite a lot from this work. Still i get the feeling that, after four years of study, i did not find "The key" yet.

Karja di Krama forged the five keris without writing down a note. For each keris he was working weeks. When we see the results, the five keris differ in the main dimensions only a few millimeters maximal. The thickness of the blades only differ tenth of millimeters.
To achieve such a result he must have been an excellent empu.

(I attached an image showing the five keris with the dimensions. I hope the image came over).

This brings me on the discussion of the mantra's and praying.
To obtain exact predefined results forging a keris, and especially to obtain a result with an obligatory pamor, after welding sometimes hundreds of layers, you will have to be very alert during the work.
One wrong maneuver and the work is lost (or a new pamor is invented). You will see the results only, at the end of the process. In case of a mistake a lot of material (in some cases very expensive meteorite material) is lost, as well as a large quantity of fuel and the cost for labor of at least three persons for weeks.

Not writing down the steps an empu makes during forging, i can understand that the empu will be praying and singing mantra's to keep fully concentrated.
This still besides his religion and the help of God he could obtain in this way.