Monday, March 30, 2026
CREDITS
Tanah Tujuh © 2006 Antares
First published in 2007
Silverfishbooks, Kuala Lumpur
First Edition
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, internet, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.
Photos & Illustrations © Antares
Front cover photograph by Colin Nicholas
Cover design by Shahril Nizam Ahmad
Typesetting and design by Silverfishbooks
Printed and bound by Academe Art & Printing Services Sdn Bhd
Kuala Lumpur
PERTINENT QUOTES
“Myth is an eternal mirror in which we see ourselves.
Myth has something to say to everyone, as it has something
to say about everyone; it is everywhere
and we only need to recognize it.”
~ J.F. Bierlein, Parallel Myths ~
"As long as a myth continues to be told true, it will also continue to transmit any higher message that may be concealed within its structure – even if neither the teller nor the hearer understands that message." ~ Robert Bauval & Graham Hancock, Keeper of Genesis ~
“A myth never has one meaning only; a myth is a polyphonic fugue of many voices.”
~ William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light ~
“We have many more stories but not much time left to tell them.” ~ Diap Anak Ketum ~
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was originally part of a multimedia project initiated by Magick River
as a tribute to the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia.
The first phase was a 52-minute documentary, Guardians of the Forest,
wholly funded by Andrew Bird, a pioneer member of the Magick River community.
Produced by Mary Maguire and directed by Alan D’Cruz in 2000,
Guardians documented the tribulations endured by a specific Orang Asli
community in the face of relentless urbanization.
This was followed by the release in August 2002 of Akar Umbi’s CD, Songs of the Dragon.
The album, featuring the healing songs of Temuan ceremonial singer Minah Angong,
was co-produced by Antares and Rafique Rashid, and funded by the Japan Foundation.
The writing of this book was sponsored, in part, by a timely grant from the
Swedish Foundation for the Internationalization of Higher Education (STINT),
facilitated by Latif Kamaluddin, former director of Research and Education for Peace (REPUSM), School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang.
The publication in 2007 of Tanah Tujuh: Close Encounters with the Temuan Mythos by Silverfishbooks marks the completion of a project that began in 1992,
with the launching of the Magick River community arts experiment.
On behalf of Magick River, I wish to thank everybody who has encouraged
and supported our work from start to finish.
PROLEGOMENA
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| Life in a High Hut named Jabba with a pregnant savage punk princess named Anoora Chapek |
From Dream To Nightmare - And Back!
WHEN I MOVED TO PERTAK, Ulu Selangor, in April 1992 my life took on a dreamlike quality. Beyond the reach – or so I believed – of the monstrous machinery of industrial society, my thoughts grew quiet and my spirit expanded. Watching the river gleefully gush on sunny days, and then seeing it transform itself into an angry, roaring dragon in full spate, it was easy to free oneself from the mundane moorings of the third dimension. The River, for me, had become the central metaphor of Life itself: an everflowing current of pure vitality, utterly unperturbed by human notions of time.
And as for space, the constant view of distant hills gave me a sense of endlessness, just as seeing the horizon when gazing out at sea frees the imagination from petty concerns and reminds one that the human world of art and artifice is by no means the only available reality option.
The large house I was renting was perched on a hill overlooking the Chiling River. Mondays through Fridays it was a heavenly hermitage, with no neighbors around, and hardly any traffic noise from the road about 300 yards away. On weekends friends would turn up loaded with goodies and provisions, all set to let down their hair and party. One couldn’t ask for a more idyllic lifestyle. For me the next step would have been to acquire a long lease on the property – perhaps even buy it over as a cooperative – so that we could begin to build the ecospiritual artistic community I had long envisioned. We needed to look into the possibility of solar and wind power generators so that we could be self-sufficient in energy.
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| My musical collaborator Rafique Rashid with Peleng, Ujah & Utat (1995) |
It would, in effect, be a nursery of alternative visions benefiting from close proximity to the wholesome influence of the local Orang Asli community. Prior to this I had never had the privilege of meeting and befriending these humble, gentle folk. Now they were my nearest neighbors and I looked forward to learning whatever I could from their traditional lore and their unassuming ways. It didn’t take long for me to realize that some of my pre-conceived notions about the Orang Asli had to be drastically modified. For one thing, this particular community had been among the first to be culturally impacted by rapacious intruders – simply because they were in Selangor, the fastest developing state and fairly close to the dynamic hub of a rapidly modernizing nation.
The first thing I noticed was that the women and children possessed an irresistible charm but the men – especially the younger ones – were a fairly dispirited lot who sought in vain to replenish their feelings of self-worth by getting drunk and hanging out at the snooker parlor. True, they seemed enormously strong when it came to transporting great loads of bamboo and cane for miles through the forest. Physically they were impressive in their agility and stamina, but psychologically they weren’t at all sure of themselves or of their tribe’s future. They just didn’t want to deal with the painful truth of their cultural and political disenfranchisement. Man-made decrees had effectively turned them into mere squatters – and, since 2004, 99-year leaseholders - on ancestral hunting grounds entrusted to their guardianship, according to oral tradition, by the Creator.
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| Jabba the High Hut @ 1997 (Photo by Ahmad Sabki) |
I was forced to move out of paradise when the property changed hands but soon found myself another perfect spot near a small waterfall a few minutes’ hike from Kampung Pertak (Pertak Village). There I had a roomy two-storey hut built that was mostly one big veranda and it became my home for the next five years. My days were spent gazing in wonder at the dreamy flight of giant tree nymphs as they glided gracefully above the trees to the neverending song of the waterfall. An underground spring supplied me with an abundance of crystal clear mineral water and a modest vegetable plot provided angled beans, pumpkins, bananas, papayas, tapioca, sweet potato leaves, and chilli padi.
During the season durians (a highly prized local fruit) came rolling down the hill onto my kitchen floor. There was no electricity, no phone, no landlord. Which meant I could live fairly comfortably on a few hundred ringgit a month for supplies, transport, and phonecalls made from Kuala Kubu Bharu town (about 8 miles or 11 kilometers away). Simply by writing an occasional magazine feature or churning out a few cartoons, I earned enough to feed myself and my little family, plus several dogs and a cat.
This dream of rustic splendor and serenity lasted all of two years, until the loggers moved in. I had read about deforestation and its debilitating effects on the ecosystem, but that was all academic. Suddenly I found myself forced into environmental activism, in defence of the beautiful area I now called home. The battle to beat off the loggers exposed me to the dark side of state bureaucracies and the deeply entrenched corruption that has grown fat on generations of public indifference. I discovered, to my chagrin and horror, that state forestry officers view themselves mainly as collectors of jungle excise and haven’t the foggiest notion of conservation. Their main function, it appears, is to assign a monetary value to each variety of hardwood. Logging is considered illegal only when the state derives no revenues from the destruction – or when the unofficial commissions are considered insufficient. In this particular instance, nature intervened and stopped the logging with one massive flash flood that swept away a whole stretch of road and inundated the new township of Ampang Pecah (Broken Dam).
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| Washing dishes in the small stream flowing by the High Hut |
Within weeks, hundreds of concerned citizens had rallied to the call to defend the beautiful Selangor River Valley. The Magick River website was activated in January 1999 and a campaign was mounted to persuade the government to consider less destructive alternatives to the dam. Soon, other websites were launched to help get the message across. By the middle of 1999, the no-dam coalition, SOS (Save Our Sungai) Selangor, had collected at least 15,000 signatures and thousands had written letters of protest to the Department of Environment. All our well-reasoned arguments fell on deaf ears (as to be expected) even though people everywhere are finally beginning to wake up to the fact that we can’t afford to desecrate what little is left of the natural environment.
By this time, my High Hut was beginning to feel a little unsafe. I decided to build a sturdier structure on the same spot and stand my ground – come hell or high water. But fate intervened in October 1999, and a freak mudslide devastated the area, leaving my hut standing, though leaning at a precarious angle. Rocks the size of a small car, mud, sand, and old tree stumps had come crashing down the waterfall and raised the ground level by at least a meter. The mudslide was caused by heavy hillslope logging carried out in 1996. I had written to the chief minister, the Department of Environment, the Health Department, and several newspapers at the time, warning that the logging concession would ruin the water supply of Pertak Village and endanger the health of the villagers. There had been no response, of course.
And so I found myself living once again in a rented house in Kuala Kubu Bharu town, amidst the maddening noise of idiot bikers and municipal grasscutters. Denied proximity to the sound of running streams and the uplifting sight of stately Rajah Brookes, I turned to the dubious delights of virtual reality, spending hours at the computer and building a labyrinthine website and later a personal blog.
In February 2000 the heavy equipment began to arrive. Initially I saw only a few bulldozers and excavators. Each day the area began to look more and more like an occupied zone. It was like the return of the Japanese Army. Hardhatted Gamuda engineers in Suzuki Jeeps arrived in force, supervising the systematic destruction of the most beautiful river valley I’ve yet to discover in the Malay Peninsula. Some made a feeble attempt to befriend the locals, while others displayed no emotion whatsoever as they went about their business. Cari makan lah. Everyone’s got to eat. But the defensive look on all their faces was a dead giveaway. Deep within their hearts they obviously knew that what they were doing was a crime against nature and their own posterity.
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| Star Commander Ahau Ben arrives in a Pleiadian scoutship! |
When the Selangor River burst its banks recently and flooded Rawang, I allowed myself a small smile of perverse satisfaction. If we’re too caught up in our petty preoccupations to appreciate and defend nature’s wondrous epiphanies against money-grubbing marauders, what we shall inevitably reap is eco-apocalypse. But, being the eternal optimist that I am, I’m counting on a planetary awakening that will see millions, if not billions, of people reclaim their power from petty bureaucracy, big business and bogus gods. Only then, through non-sectarian love, cooperation and trust - rather than through violence born of fear - will we regain the paradise that is our divine inheritance.
Antares
Magick River
June 2006
An early draft of this was published in VOX, 6 May 2001
Foreword by Robert Knox Dentan
Tanah Tujuh, literally “Earth #7,” is an engaging and humble account of the life and beliefs of Temuan people who live in the same community, Kampung Pertak, as the author.
The author, Kit Leee – writing under his spiritual name Antares – is a poet, musician, mystic and humorist who more or less stumbled across the remnants of Temuan tradition while trying unsuccessfully to defend his home and theirs from the inundation that resulted from a new dam.
Relocated after a prolonged but ineffectual campaign against the Selangor Dam, Antares and his Temuan wife Anoora now live in suburban bungalows in the gorgeous Pertak Valley, which on weekends is inundated in its turn by urbanites seeking escape from Kuala Lumpur and its satellites.
Anyone who has sat in on jam sessions on Antares’s front porch with young Temuan children can see how close his relationship with the people has become.
The book’s ventures into comparative mythopoesis may put more pedestrian anthropologists and political scientists off-stride. But, although this is an intensely personal document, Antares is too careful a reporter to confuse his own responses with Temuan narrative.
The book closes with a sobering account of the Temuan’s ongoing struggle against systematic ethnocide.
March 2006
Preface
AT THE OUTSET I wish to declare that I am not an anthropologist.
I am, however, deeply interested in mythology. What fascinates me about the mythic tradition is that it has proven to be an effective way of preserving important archetypal images and ideas for thousands of years, merely through oral transmission down the generations. Like nursery rhymes imbibed in early childhood, a myth once heard is never forgotten, even if a few minor details get added or subtracted along the way.
In this respect I perceive myths as organic time capsules of the tribal superconscious. More precisely they are a semiotic time-travel device: “reality spores” designed to survive eons of incomprehension or indifference, only to germinate anew as soon as favorable conditions occur. To bring the stories back to life, you only have to add the water of empathy, of emotive resonance. Of course, it helps greatly if you also have “genetic access” to the stories. For each story, like a life, has its own specific genealogy. But in the end, all stories can be traced to a single source - the Mother Lode of Stories - which I comprehend as the deep memory of the Earth herself.
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| An old Malay saying, illustrated by Antares |
MYTHOLOGY, folklore, and grandmothers' tales are by definition non-logical story forms, meaningless to the rational mind and subject to no “scientific proof.” Characters tend to appear and disappear without rhyme or reason, and their actions and reactions are generally an unfathomable mystery - until one adds the essential ingredient, subjectivity. The fact that “mystery” and “myth” both contain the key word my is highly instructive. One has to own them, take personal possession of these transpersonal, extra-dimensional truths, before they yield their secret kernel of meaning. More specifically, one has to incorporate the mythic system into one's vision quest, so that the sense of revelation which follows the sudden flash of insight becomes an intensely intimate experience. For whom does the bell toll, if not yourself?
In attempting to piece together the few Temuan myth fragments that I chanced upon, I have had to apply a liberal amount of interpretative glue. It is certainly not my intention to present this as some sort of “definitive” Temuan gospel. The shreds of tribal lore that have survived, at least amongst the Temuan I know, are too tattered and incomplete to reconstitute into any meaningful whole - unless one matches them with myth fragments from other native traditions. But essentially I just want to share my own insights and opinions - and the exquisite tingle of quiet excitement that each discovery brought - with whomsoever may be interested.
The gods and heroes of antiquity are, in truth, fragments of our own mystery, our own unfolding story in space and time. We need only take the initiative to reclaim them from the myopia of our throwaway consumer culture and the self-destructive forgetfulness of our times.
Introduction
SINCE 1992 I have lived amongst the Temuan - one of eighteen Orang Asli tribes indigenous to Peninsular Malaysia and officially classified as “Austronesian” or “Proto-Malay” (though the latter term has recently fallen out of academic favor). Their ancestral hunting grounds once covered much of the central portion of the Malay peninsula (known in antiquity as the Chersonese of Gold).
Gunung Rajah (the Royal Mountain), which marks the boundary between the states of Selangor and Pahang, is revered as pusat negri or “the navel of the nation.” Temuan creation myths invariably name Gunung Rajah as the birthplace of the present human race, Manusia.
The word temuan derives from temu, to meet. It means a crossroads or convergence or a plateau where all faces of a mountain meet. Bukit Temuan, two kilometers northeast of Kuala Kubu Bharu, once bore a major Temuan settlement. Loggers have now desecrated the hill and it bleeds red earth after every heavy downpour.
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| Hitap Anak Hitam (Yam Kokok) photographed by Vignes Balasingam on 18 June 2008 |
There is every likelihood that the Temuan are actually a synthetic group, a genetic fusion of several aboriginal tribes with Sumatran and Javanese migrants. The Temuan language can be considered the original Negri Malay dialect believed to have been imported from Jambi, southeastern Sumatra - but, bearing in mind that the entire Malay Archipelago was actually a continuous land mass before the rising of the seas, the greater likelihood is that Malay was already a well-established lingua franca in the region. Its Sanskrit derivations probably pre-date the Majapahit Empire of the 13th to 15th centuries. The modern Bahasa used in Indonesia and Malaysia has a grammatical sophistication acquired from more recent Arabic and Anglo-European influences. Despite many unanswered (and perhaps unanswerable) questions surrounding paleoanthropological research in this region where climatic conditions, political sensitivities, and economic priorities conspire against systematic excavation and the preservation of artifacts, it is difficult not to conclude that the Temuan are indeed the taproot of the Malay race. Their own traditions speak distinctly of their ancestral linkages.
A popular Temuan story with many variations tells of two brothers who attended a gathering of the Earth tribes in “the age of grace when humans understood the speech of animals.” On their way home a storm broke and capsized their vessel. Abang (the elder) grabbed his blowpipe before plunging into the raging waves and swimming to shore. Adik (the younger) managed to save only a sacred scroll. But that was enough to give him the upper hand over Abang, who remained a hunter-gatherer while Adik acquired book-learning, institutionalized religion, and the ability to write new laws.
Adik also recorded in writing many of the original Temuan “bedside stories” featuring archetypal animal characters like Sang Kancil (Mousedeer), Sang Buaya (Crocodile), and Sang Harimau (Tiger) - which read like a tropical version of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows and have become an important element of mainstream Malay folk culture.
Engangement ceremony, March 1995. I had to "engkim" with the Asli Mafia
despite my body's aversion to alcohol!
EVEN WITH my modest command of Malay, I found it easy to converse with the Temuan elders on a variety of topics, ranging from ancient traditions to current affairs. Unfortunately, by the time I got accepted as an honorary member (or at least a trusted friend) of the tribe, there were very few elders left who remembered the old stories, or who had sufficient breath left to tell them. Initially some seemed a little reticent, being unused to questions about their tribal heritage. The fear of being exploited or ridiculed by outsiders was understandably prevalent. However their attitude towards me changed from mild curiosity to genuine warmth when I performed the nuptial rites with Anoora Chapek in June, 1995. Suddenly I was family, and they were eager to educate me about their worldview and their immense knowledge of the jungle. (The melodramatic ups and downs of sharing a hut with my newly acquired "savage punk princess" deserves some sort of documentation, but the story is better suited to a soap-opera or sit-com rather than a speculative mythology).
Within the last few years so many of the older folk have died, I am grateful to have known them just long enough to hear a mere handful of Temuan tales. “We have many more stories,” said Anoora's favourite uncle, Diap Anak Ketum, with a sad smile, “but not much time left to tell them.”
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| Mak Wan in 1992. Medicine woman & second wife to Diap, she was reputed to be a real siren in her youth |
One evening she arrived at her sister-in-law Indah's house to watch television (on an archaic black-and-white set powered by a car battery) and found the floor already full. I made room for her and she shuffled over with a broad, toothless grin. When she had settled in comfortably she patted me on the shoulder and announced: “This one is like a son to me!” I shall never forget the warm glow and sense of honor I felt. It was the first gesture of genuine acceptance from the tribe.
In early 1994 Mak Wan returned to her home village in Pahang. She took ill again and was admitted to the hospital in Raub. She expired soon after being discharged, while chatting quietly with her husband, When I heard the news I had a fleeting vision of her as a vivacious woman of 30, the veritable belle of her village. Diap was utterly inconsolable. It transpired that the witchy old Mak Wan had cast a love spell on him, to keep him faithful (well-known flirt that he was); and the spell could only be broken by jampi (medicine) more powerful than Mak Wan's. The resident shaman of Pertak Village, Sibin Aus, was unable to relieve Diap's broken heart.
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| Diap Anak Ketum, among the last keepers of tribal lore, died on 14 February 1997 |
“Oh, let him stay here in familiar surroundings,” I pleaded. “He may not have much time left.” Twelve hours later (on Valentine's Day, 1997) Diap Anak Ketum was reunited with his beloved Mak Wan. At his funeral I heard the wali (guardian of ceremonial protocol) address Diap's spirit by his esoteric name:
“Seri Pagi! Wake up! Wake up!” the wali commanded, whipping the freshly covered burial mound with a bundle of leaves. “Come on, don't be tardy, get up now! This isn't your home anymore! We've made a temporary shelter for you, stocked with everything you might need before you fly off to the mountain to rejoin your ancestors on Pulau Buah. So don't hang around here bothering the living, do you hear? We bid you a speedy journey home, Seri Pagi!”
With that the funeral service was over. As we made our slow way back to the village, I asked Indah why the wali had called Diap by a different name. “Seri Pagi is his true name,” Indah explained. “He was given that name at birth and now he must reclaim it.” Seri Pagi. Morning Glory? Glorious Morning? In either case, a beautiful name for a such a noble and romantic being.
I HAD APPROACHED Seri Pagi many times with a gentle request for permission to document some of his stories. “You must do it for the sake of your grandchildren and their grandchildren,” I told him. “Each of us has a duty to fulfill before we depart the physical world, and I feel that this is yours.”
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| Nadi Pak Empok (Antares) |
Often he would smile apologetically and a look of unutterable fatigue would cross his weathered but still-handsome features. “It's been so long, I don't know if I can remember that much,” he would begin. Then a mischievous twinkle would flash in his eyes: “Maybe if I had a little drink, it might help my memory!” Well, he wasn't supposed to imbibe. Alcohol aggravated his ulcers and after each binge he would be in bad shape for days.
Once in a while, his sisters Indah and Minah would forget their pledge to keep Seri Pagi from temptation, and an evening of jollity fueled by a bottle or two of toddy (a coconut palm wine popular with working-class Indians) would ensue, leading to spirited reminiscences and the recounting of many long-forgotten stories. I was lucky to be present at several of these sessions, and what little I have gleaned from Seri Pagi, Mak Minah, and their brother Utat has been augmented by valuable contributions and commentary from Penengah Apak Busu Pegoi (who balik Pulau - departed for the Isle of Fruits - on 30 April 1998, at 91 the oldest man in Pertak Village), his wife Piah Agok, and their eldest son Utih, a humble soft-spoken man.
Another willing and eloquent informant was Nadi Pak Empok, master of the pantun (a humorous poetic form akin to the limerick) - who, to our great distress, suffered a stroke in October 1996, and expired exactly one week after Seri Pagi's departure. Indah's husband Rasid Aus was a great help with confirming names and verifying certain information. His elder brother Sibin Aus, resident shaman of Pertak, provided a few marvelously lucid insights during his sober moments.
One gets the feeling that, as individuals, the Temuan don't pretend to understand their own legends. The mere act of remembering “the stories grandma used to tell” appears to magically enliven their tribal semangat (spirit). Long may it live.
I dedicate this work to them. And to their grandchildren's grandchildren. And, of course, to Ahau Ben (firstborn of my sacred union with Anoora) who arrived on the Vernal Equinox of 1996.
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| Ahau Ben with delighted grandmother Indah Merkol in 1996 (Antares) |
Origins of Manusia
"Creation Story" by Wayne Rector
THERE ARE NUMEROUS STORIES of how Manusia (Humanity) came to be, but none can be regarded as definitive. Mak Minah’s version is so similar to the one recounted in Genesis that my first thought was to discount it as an authentic Temuan creation myth. Perhaps Mak Minah’s grandmother had heard the tale from a Christian or Muslim missionary and subsequently incorporated it into her repertoire of bedtime stories.
But wasn’t it equally possible that Mak Minah’s version was true to the spirit of a universal creation myth that eventually made its way into Judeo-Christian and Islamic belief systems via Mesopotamia?
Creation of Manusia (Version 1: Mak Minah)
Tuhan (God) made Manusia out of tanah liat (clay). Then he breathed his Spirit into the clay figure and it came to life. When Tuhan saw that the first Man was lonely, he decided to make him a companion. So Tuhan put a deep sleep upon his creature and removed a rib from the lower part of his rib cage. Out of this Tuhan fashioned Woman.
Creation of Manusia (Version 2: Sibin Aus)
Tuhan came upon two punai (pink-collared green pigeon) eggs in a nest and mistook them for unripe fruits. Every day he looked in on the nest to see if the “fruits” were ripening. Finally the day came when the eggs hatched and he was delighted to see two baby pigeons cheeping in their nest. “Ha! These are very special fruits indeed!” Tuhan exclaimed, inspired by the apparent miracle. “Perhaps that’s the way to create children of my own: I need to implant my own seed in an egg and incubate it till it hatches!”
Tuhan’s first experiment produced a male offspring, which he called Manusia, or Human. Then he remembered there were two baby pigeons in the nest and they had seemed so happy together. Tuhan tried out the “eggs-periment” again and an identical being was hatched.
“Hmm,” Tuhan mused, “We might have to introduce the concept of gender at this point if my project is to evolve beyond the embryonic stage.”
He decided to give each Human an egg to swallow. The first one gagged on the egg, which got stuck halfway down his throat. The second one swallowed the egg without difficulty and it came to rest in his abdomen, just below the belly button. Immediately he grew breasts and was ready to be impregnated.
“Oh, oh,” Tuhan said, “We’d better call this one a She!” (Sibin chuckled and added that some people believe the first woman was actually created out of one of the first man’s ribs. He then rolled up his singlet and pointed at the missing rib in his rib cage. “And there’s the proof!” he quipped.)
Tuhan & Iblis (God & Devil): Creation & Design
ACCORDING TO SIBIN AUS, the first humans which Tuhan made were like patong (dolls) with no discernible facial or bodily features. They were, truth be told, extremely crude and primitive. Iblis (or Hablis, as Sibin pronounces it) came along and shook his head. “Not bad,” he said, “but I have a few suggestions, if you don’t mind my interfering.”
Tuhan raised an eyebrow and stroked his chin. “Well, show me what you have in mind.” Iblis set to work and soon the human was endowed with eyes and ears and nose and mouth and fingers and toes... and genitals.
Tuhan had to concede that Iblis had truly succeeded in making a good thing even better. “Great stuff,” Tuhan said, patting Iblis on the back. “From now on, let’s work as a team. I’ll handle the Grand Design, you take care of the Details!”
And this is why Manusia, while essentially godly, is also always somewhat diabolical.
But why twins? Is there a long-forgotten truth to be gleaned about bi-polarity as the basis of creation? Does our Sun have an invisible twin? Does the Milky Way galaxy have a twin in Andromeda? Is this why everyone seems to be in perpetual search of a Twin Flame?
After the Deluge
THERE WAS A GREAT FLOOD that covered the whole world with raging waters. Nobody can say how long ago it happened. Many, many thousands of years ago - that much is certain. Before that, the old legends say, the earth was connected to the sky. There was a great ladder or stairway used by the gods. A few humans with magical charms or secret knowledge were said to have climbed the heavenly stairway. The gods were our creators and they once walked on Tanah Tujuh, which is the name of this world. Then something terrible happened and the stairway was broken or sealed off. From then on the gods could only speak to us through dreams.
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| Diap & Minah with Mary Maguire (cleverly disguised as a White Woman), producer of "Guardians of the Forest" |
Diap Anak Ketum was the Keeper of the Tribal Archives. After his death, his sisters Indah and Minah told me this tale which they heard from their brother (whom they reverently addressed by the magical name Seri Pagi, meaning Morning Glory):
“At Gunung Pelului you can still see the petrified remains of our divine ancestors - Mamak and Inak Bongsu and their youngest child - surrounded by huge stone bolsters, thrones, beds, and bowls. When the child overdosed on the delicious but deadly fruit of the bertam palm and died (puking profusely and leaving a trail of fast-sprouting thorny palms whose leaves we now weave into thatch for our roofs), Mamak and Inak Bongsu realized they no longer enjoyed immortality. Experiencing grief for the first time, they fell into a deathly swoon and became part of the landscape.”
What terrible thing happened that caused the connection between Heaven and Earth to be severed?
“Please don't be offended,” Indah and Minah said, “but the gods found that humans had soiled the stairway with menstrual blood.”
Menstrual blood? Herein lies that old patriarchal fascination with and fear of the secret workings of women's wombs: the origin of all sexual taboos, the fall from grace precipitated by the knowledge of carnality, of “good and evil.” Herein lies the dualism and schizophrenia engendered by the animality of biological reproduction, the famous fig leaf syndrome. Was humanity's “loss of innocence” merely our entry into psychic puberty and self-consciousness, our initiation into sexual awareness, and the accompanying moral confusion which has marred (or at least marked) our evolution to this day?
FOR A VERY LONG TIME everything was underwater. Then, very slowly the waters subsided. Eventually the top of the tallest gaharu (eaglewood) tree on Gunung Rajah was exposed. Two figures clung to the tree. They were Mamak Bongsu and Inak Bongsu, brother and sister, also husband and wife. They were the Father and Mother of all human beings. Feeding on the soggy pulp of the gaharu tree, they waited for the waters to reveal the land below. Only when they could see dry ground did they descend.
For a while they made their home on the slopes of Gunung Rajah. As more land appeared around them, they decided to explore the next hill. While resting near the top of this hill, Inak Bongsu felt an itch on her head. She began to scratch and two large ticks (kutu) fell out of her hair. They were busy mating. Intrigued, she called to Mamak Bongsu, who came over to watch. “That looks like fun,” Inak Bongsu said. Mamak Bongsu wasted no time carrying out the experiment. Emulating the copulating ticks, he mounted his sister-wife. That's how there came to be so many people in this world. And that hill is known as Bukit Kutu.
After a few generations had passed, it occurred to Tuhan (God) that some sort of edict against incest was required, to minimize the negative effects of genetic regression. And so it came to pass that incest was outlawed.
THE GREAT DELUGE is a mythic tale told by almost every tribe on Earth. It has been recorded on Sumerian cuneiform tablets dating back more than 6,000 years and subsequently paraphrased in the biblical story of Noah's Ark. Peruvian and Mesoamerican legends speak of gods and giants who - “in a single night and a day” - erected colossal cities and vast metallurgical and astronomical complexes. And in a single night and a day, the legends say, these divine artifacts were destroyed by the Great Waters.
Around 560 B.C. the Greek lawgiver Solon visited Egypt where he heard the tale of a mighty civilization called Atlantis, which was destroyed in a series of violent cataclysms culminating in 9,560 B.C. Plato recorded Solon's account in his Timaeus and Critias. It is certain that such an event would have been linked to geophysical upheavals on a planetary scale: massive earthquakes, tidal waves, unprecedented floods, and the wild fluctuation or temporary collapse of the earth's magnetic field.
Geologists estimate that the Pleistocene Epoch lasted from 2,500,000 to approximately 10,000 years ago - with several interglacial periods during which sea levels rose dramatically as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice caps. Recent geological evidence indicates a specific period around 10,800 B.C. when horrific magnetic storms and unimaginable geophysical changes were visited upon the planet. This “catastrophe theory” - first publicly propounded in 1950 by Immanuel Velikovsky (Worlds in Collision, Ages in Chaos, etc.) - corresponds more or less with arcane knowledge revealed in recent decades, when Andean and Himalayan mystery schools (supervised by the Melchizedek Order, guardians of the portals of initiation into universal mysteries) felt it was time to operate more openly.
Spiritual Messengers suddenly emerged in Peru and the Maya lands, proclaiming the end of the Nine Hells - nearly five hundred years of Spanish Catholic rule - and the beginning of a new Solar Age. Esoteric knowledge began to be widely disseminated through best-selling paperback books and on countless internet websites. Housewives, secretaries, real estate agents, lawyers, and CEOs suddenly became interested in their own etheric bodies, studying alternative healing methods like Aromatherapy, Qiqong, Reiki, Holistic Pulsing, and Emotional Releasing.
The world seems to be in for another Great Flood - this time of hitherto “classified” information.
Mamak and Inak Bongsu
BY COMPARING various mythological scenarios with available archeological and geological evidence, we may surmise that the Great Deluge reported in Temuan lore occurred approximately 13,000 years ago.
As for the identity of Mamak and Inak Bongsu, the Temuan say that they are the human form of Tuhan (the Supreme God) on Earth.
Although their spiritual worldview has generally been termed Animism, they clearly believe that all spirits originate from one Great Spirit who is simply known as Tuhan or the Lord. The Aztecs mistook the bearded, pale-faced conquistador Hernando Cortés for their bearded, fair-skinned god Quetzalcoatl, And the Malays - until as recently as the Second World War - addressed the white colonists of Malaya as Tuan (a contraction of “Tuhan”).
Interestingly, when you repeat the word tuhan rapidly, you begin to hear the word hantu, which means ghost or spirit. (We are reminded that the third aspect of the Christian trinity is called the Holy Ghost, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete or the Holy Breath. To stretch the point a little further, tuhan also happens to be an anagram of hutan or forest - which, to the Orang Asli, means Mother Nature or Home Sweet Home).
“Tuhan, Hutan, and Hantu” may be the Holy Trinity of the Orang Asli - but, to all intents and purposes, the Temuan regard Mamak Bongsu and Inak Bongsu as the earthly form of Tuhan in both male and female aspects - and their seven children as a sort of divine First Family from which all their bloodlines derive. I have heard Seri Pagi use the phrase Mamak Bongsu Pancu Bunga Tuan Kecik to express the relationship of the Temuan to their tutelary gods, whose earthly home is (or was) Gunung Rajah.
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| Home of rainbows, Lata Chehek (Antares) |
Bongsu is a term of endearment reserved for the youngest in the family. Mamak and Inak Bongsu can either be taken to mean that both are the youngest gods in an unnamed pantheon - or that they qualified for the name when their seventh child was born.
The paradoxical question of divine singularity versus plurality is simply accepted for what it is - a paradox. The One God becomes the Many and vice versa. Tuan Kecik literally means Junior or Tiny God. Taken as a metaphor, it refers perhaps to the God-Within-All-Beings (in modern parlance, the Sacred Fractal or Holy Hologram).
Indeed the basis of Animism is found in the etymology of the Latin word anima which means soul, life-giving force, the consciousness or spirit within all material phenomena. Carl Gustav Jung, the great psychoanalytical thinker, used the term anima to describe the “true inner self” reflecting archetypal ideals imprinted in the “collective unconscious” or tribal psyche.
The animist thus perceives and reveres the indwelling spirit or individual consciousness behind all material forms, whether they be regarded as mineral, vegetable, animal - or as macro-elemental manifestations like earthquakes, thunderstorms, floods, and diseases. When someone falls ill, the animist wonders what malignant spirit (hantu) has taken temporary possession of the person. Meanwhile, the scientist wonders what bacterium or virus is to be blamed for the symptoms. Same belief system, different terminologies.
But germs can be seen under a microscope, the scientific materialist argues. Well, any tribal shaman in a trance (and a great majority of ordinary tribal folk under certain conditions) can see and identify specific spirits or hantu, using a faculty which urbanized humanity seems, for the most part, to have lost.
Seeing Beyond 3D
ANOORA’S STEPFATHER Rasid Aus, a quiet, thoughtful chap in his mid-forties who seems as comfortable with the past as he is with the present, often sees apparitions. He would describe, almost casually, the assorted hideous forms he encountered the night before while doing his rounds as a security guard in a nearby youth training center (Pusat Belia).
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| Rasid Aus in his security guard outfit |
A few days later, Anoora's uncle Utat told me he had seen two beautiful women in a dream, watching lovingly over Ahau. I asked Utat if he had heard Rasid's report, and he looked even more pleased. “See, Rasid also saw them. That's very good!” Utat grinned. I wasn't surprised to learn that Utat is reputed to be fairly chummy with the Orang Halus (elves) of Bukit Secocol. Indeed, he finally admitted, after much gentle teasing over the years, that he was married to two beautiful elf-maidens – which explains why he has remained a bachelor all his life. No mortal female, according to Utat, can compare with the Orang Halus when it comes to pulchritude!
The word halus means gentle, refined, or noble. Once upon a time, the Orang Halus were regarded as angels, or at least “good fairies.” When Manusia (humankind) became more and more kasar (coarse or ignoble) and began desecrating nature, the Halus felt offended, as they had to keep moving into the subtler dimensions. These days the Temuan are generally afraid of the mischief a bunch of disgruntled Halus can do. They tell stories about people who suffer terrible mishaps or die suddenly of incurable jungle fevers soon after they did something offensive to the Halus. (Many years ago, a public works department worker ignored warnings about a huge yellow rock in the Selangor River. He proceeded to carry out some engineering operation on the rock. Within minutes he was feeling delirious with fever, and within hours he was dead. The yellow rock, apparently, was a popular Halus hangout. No one has dared disturb it since - though what has become of it since dam construction began is anybody’s guess. Perhaps the rock now rests beneath the steel-reinforced concrete bridge that claimed at least three lives during its construction?)
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| Utat Merkol never married but enjoyed astral dalliances with an elf-maiden (or two). On 16 February 2007, a gentle rain (hujan rahmat) descended and bore Utat's soul (roh) to Gunung Rajah |
A few months later, Utat and his second cousin Selindar Babot were forced to abandon their forest dwelling when a punai (pink-collared green pigeon) flew into their sleeping quarters. For more than three months Utat and Selindar had to bunk down with Indah and Rasid. I asked Utat what it was all about, and all he would say was, “The punai is a very ill omen.” He seemed very shaken by the whole thing. I found it hard to accept that all it took to scare them was for a pigeon to fly into their hut. “Surely,” I probed, “this sort of thing happens quite often?”
Utat's reply was terse: “It was no ordinary pigeon.”
After a certain period of pantang (taboo) had elapsed, Utat and Selindar quietly moved back into their home. Only quite recently, about a year after the incident, did I manage to extract from Utat what exactly it was that had spooked him and Selindar. It was a hantu seburu (spectral hunter), disguised as a pigeon. Or perhaps the poor bird was only seeking refuge from the invisible predator. The best thing that arose from this incident was that it forced Utat - who is extremely shy, almost to the point of being a recluse - to stay within chatting distance for a few months, so that I could tap him for esoteric information.
“Sounds like the jungle is full of unseen dangers,” I commented.
“It gets worse,” Utat said without elaboration.
“Do you mean the spirits were much friendlier in the old days?”
Utat nodded.
“Is this because we have been encroaching on their world with our bulldozers and military exercises and so on?” I ventured.
Utat favored me with a thin smile, as if to say, “Clever boy!”
I felt an important point had been established. “Well, so many hills have been leveled, so much forest felled, and now all we see are residential estates, factories, new townships... does this mean the spirits have had to flee? Or are they still around somewhere?”
Even as I asked the question, the answer was already forming in my thoughts. What the Orang Asli (aboriginal tribes) call “spirits” others call “magnetic field disturbances.” When someone is stricken with sakit hutan (jungle fever), the Orang Asli say he must have done something to offend some guardian spirit. Allopathic doctors would say a mystery virus got him. It was suddenly clear to me that no matter what terminology one preferred, Nature had her own way of resolving ecosystemic imbalances caused by human greed and insensitivity - whether through inclement climatic changes, pestilential diseases spread by unknown viral strains, or simply by letting us drive one another berserk to the point of full-scale biological, climatological or nuclear warfare.
Spiral Stairway to the Sky
BEFORE THE GREAT DELUGE, long before the birth of humankind, the gods were able to descend to Earth on a spiral stairway connecting the Underworld to the Heavenly Realms. Who were these gods? They were the progenitors of our earliest ancestors - of whom no one may speak without experiencing terrible confusion, for they existed before language was used to divide rather than unify. But without these gods nothing would exist, not even the sky nor the earth itself...
In 1972 a geneticist from Oregon State University, Adela Baer, recorded a Temuan myth fragment which explains why the Malay peninsula has been spared serious earthquakes: Malaya, being “the place of origin and dispersal of the human species,” has only seen one major cataclysm when “the land split up and separated the grandchildren of [Mamak and Inak Bongsu] into different land masses of the world.”
IT WAS TUHAN (God) who created Tanah Tujuh to be His earthly abode.
Tanah Tujuh is our dense physical world, the meeting place of stone and star. Our world has had many lives. It has died and been born again. And again. And again. This is the fourth world since the beginning of Time. (On checking this point with Mak Minah, she said she had heard of only one previous apocalypse, even though I distinctly recall hearing her brother Seri Pagi speak of four great cycles of creation and destruction on Tanah Tujuh. But, then, keeping count isn’t exactly Mak Minah’s forte.)
Mak Minah wading across Sungai Luit (photo by Colin Nicholas)
Utat says: “A long, long time ago, the Orang Halus (elven folk) offered our people the chance to leave with them to a higher world. Our nenek-moyang (ancestors) called it Tanah Sejuk (the Cold Land). They were warned that Tanah Tujuh would soon become Tanah Panas (the Hot Land) and life would be a real struggle. They said it would get harder and harder to cross over. But only half the tribes wanted to leave Tanah Tujuh.
We are descendants of the ones who stayed. The ones who loved Tanah Tujuh and felt that we had a special destiny here. Our ancestors said that when the Orang Asli are no longer performing their duties as Guardians of the Sacred Sites, the whole world will be overturned and destroyed. A new world will arise.
Already the signs can be seen. But we are not afraid. Tuhan loves his children, and all those who remember their source are Tuhan's children. We shall shed our baju (physical bodies, earthly clothes) and live happy and free on Pulau Buah (the Isle of Fruits). They say on Pulau Buah no one goes hungry, nor feels pain and sorrow. All families will be reunited, from the beginning to the end.”
An Ojibway Legend
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| Spiral Stairway to Heaven (courtesy of StockCake) |
As retold by Barbara Juster Esbensen in Ladder to the Sky: How The Gift of Healing Came to the Ojibway Nation (Little, Brown and Company, 1989), this story was first written down in 1850 by the Ojibway chief Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh, who later took the name George Copway. I quote a few lines lifted from the narrative:
In their own language, the Ojibway, or Chippewa people, are known as Anishinabe -”original people”... Long ago, in the old, forgotten time, Gitchi Manitou, the Great Spirit created only strong, healthy people... Nobody was ever sick in those days. Nobody died. When somebody grew old, Manitou sent one of the shining spirit-messengers down the magic vine that grew in the very center of the Ojibway lands.
The vine grew in the earth, but its far-off top was looped around a star. The shining spirit-messenger would carry the the old one up and up and up through the vine's great leaves - up into the sky itself. There, the old ones lived forever, watching over their beloved people and the campfires twinkling below.
The Ojibway people were forbidden to touch this magic vine. It was a living ladder connecting the earth with Manitou's great blue sky home. Other spirit-messengers also came to earth from time to time to see that everything was going well. These spirits came down the magic vine from the North, the South, the East, and the West - from every corner of Gitchi Manitou's kingdom. They took the form of [humans], and they would walk through a village or a camp and speak to every person living there - no matter how young, no matter how old.
In Ladder to the Sky, beautiful illustrations (by Helen K. Davie) show the magic vine as a spiral creeper connecting the earth with a subtler dimension beyond the sky. One is immediately reminded of the famous story of Jack and the Beanstalk. This is just one example of the powerful symbolic resonances that underlie the unique, yet universal, nature of all traditional folklore.
We are grateful for Chief Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh's exceptional foresight in “setting down Ojibway history, customs, and legends because he was afraid this valuable information would one day disappear entirely.”
Unfortunately, the Temuan have yet to produce a tribal scribe - someone “of the blood” who can document the ancestors' tales for posterity. And by the time they do, there will be no elders left to tell their stories.
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