Pak Mudi, I most sincerely regret that I must differ from you in your opinion that Jawa was not home to an animist culture prior to the establishment of Islam.
In fact, in many respects, and in many places, Jawa is still an animist culture.
Although Indonesia is the world`s most populous Islamic nation, the truth is that only a very small percentage of people in Indonesia are devout Muslims, and only about 6,5% could be regarded as Islamic conservatives. The vast majority of people in Jawa, particularly, are Muslim KTP. Abangan.
When the nation of Indonesia was established one of the principles of its foundation was religious freedom. All were entitled to follow the religion of their choice. Regretably, the act of choice was compulsory.You could be any religion that you wished, but you could not be of no religion. The result was that a very large number of people who could not have been considered Muslim by any stretch of the imagination, opted to be identified as Muslim. The flowon from this was that Jawa in particular has developed a form of Islam that would not be recognised as Islam in many other Islamic countries.In fact, once away from the major cities, it would be difficult not to categorise this rural form of Javanese Islam as Islamic-Animism, which of course is something of an oxymoron, but then, Jawa itself is a place of many contradictions.
Animism may be briefly defined as:-
A belief that individual spirits inhabit objects , that spirits are separable from physical bodies, and that a spiritual force permeates the universe.
This belief is active in many parts of Jawa today, and it most certainly did exist in combination with the form of the Hindu faith practiced by the court in Majapahit.
The ordinary people of Jawa have never wholeheartedly followed the religion practiced by the courts of Jawa, whatever that religion may have been at any point in time. The courts in turn have adapted their practice of the Hindu faith, or Islam, to accomodate the beliefs of the ordinary people.
Yes, certainly, the court culture of the Majapahit Kingdom can be regarded as high culture by any standard, but the further any place in Jawa was from the influence of the court, the more there was likely to be a domination of the belief system of the inhabitants of that place by traditional animist beliefs and ancestor worship.
It should be noted that animist beliefs are not necessarily exclusive of other religious beliefs. For instance , the Toraja who I am certain you, Pak Mudi, would be very familiar with, practice a unique form of Christian-Animism.
I find it very interesting that you, Pak Mudi, tell us that if we feed a keris we can give it life, and that if we fail to continue to feed it, the keris could turn on us bring misfortune.
I put it to you that no keris is ever going to be capable of turning on anybody and bringing that person misfortune, or for that matter, good fortune.A keris is simply a physical object made of metal, by a man. Can a man create life? Of course not! Only God can create life, so how can something made by man develop any life of its own?
However, perhaps an object made by man can become a vessel for a spiritual force.
If this spiritual force enters the keris, it is the spiritual force that may bring fortune or misfortune, not the keris itself.
And any of this can only happen if the human being concerned believes that it can happen.
The keris itself must be viewed separately from any spiritual force that may be believed to be within it.
Now, if this is not animist belief, then what is it?
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