[A. G. Maisey]

Understood & agreed David.


EDIT


David, I wrote my initial response to your Post #8 as soon as I opened my computer for the day. First thing I did. Since then I've had breakfast, attended to a couple of business matters, checked out the weather and uttered a couple of prayers to the Controller of Weather in the hopes that the rain and cold weather will stop. January should be beach-time here in the Land of Oz, instead I'm wearing a tracksuit and woolen slippers. Not good.

And I've been thinking, thinking that I really should add a little tail to my agreement.

At the present time we can throw a few relevant search terms into Google and come up many sellers of keris. For example, my search term a few minutes ago was:-

"mystic powerful keris kris for sale"

I got 265,000 hits in less than half a second.

I scanned down the list of sellers, some I have known about for years, others seemed like new additions, one seller has a number of different sites with different presentations that all come back to the same person, who deals in talismanic items, all guaranteed to have been tested by a qualified mystic in Indonesia and to contain very powerful "servants" & occasionally a "genie".

These sellers also offer keris that are presented as being hundreds of years older than they truly are and with accompanying promises of powerful esoteric powers, all guaranteed & tested by Indonesian mystics & with certificates from famous museums. I will not mention the asking prices, but if you feel like a bit of light amusement these sites are easy enough to find, especially for people who live in the UK.

Many people who are outside the keris bearing societies of South East Asia do have some basic knowledge of the keris, and a percentage of these people also have an interest in the legendary mystical qualities of the keris.

Over the years I have had many people contact me with questions relating to the esoteric qualities of the keris, I have tried to assist as best I can, but sometimes some people would prefer to believe the snake oil salesmen. Because of this I am usually pretty hesitant with my responses to questions about the keris when those questions are related to the Hidden World.

I do not ever wish to insult, discourage or disappoint people. What I would like to be able to do is to encourage people to learn the reality of the spiritual nature of some keris.

But that cannot be done in isolation from a knowledge of the culture & society of the people who hold the keris as a central icon of their culture.

You cannot remove the keris from the place that gave it birth, and expect to understand it, any more than you can understand roses without an understanding of the soil and climate that permits them to grow.

These shysters who trade off the inadequate understanding of genuine people who have a genuine interest in keris, but who do not yet have a level of knowledge that is adequate to permit them to distinguish the false from the genuine, are a pox on the World of the Keris.

These liars and pretenders and shonks and shysters and snake oil salesmen are stealing something from innocent, trusting people, something that can be quite beautiful.

It is not the money that they steal that is important, this is totally unimportant, we can always replace money, what they are stealing is the possibility of an experience that can open a new and enhanced vision of the world around us.

The keris is a multi facetted object, and one of those facets is an opening to a world of magic that very few people truly experience.

As long as these lying wolves are out there selling their falsehoods and deceptions it can only damage something that many of us here hold dear.