[A. G. Maisey]

Jean, what I have written above is a very brief, very superficial outline of the major belief system concerning the way in which the concept of tuah was understood by the people in Solo who taught me.

In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, this is my own belief in respect of the way in which the observed qualities of a keris should be understood.

For about five years I lived in a very old house that had the reputation of being inhabited by a spirit presence, his identity was known, he had been seen by a number of people, including my three year old son, who regarded him as his friend. My wife at the time would avoid one of the rooms in this house and would close & lock the door to this room if I was not at home. If she entered the room she could feel a presence behind her, if she turned around quickly she would see a movement in the air. She was very uncomfortable in this house and in spite of its beauty and the sweeping views from the back verandah we eventually sold it and moved. During the entire time we were there I did not see, feel, nor experience anything even remotely unusual. I am not a sensitive person.

I have been given more than a few keris and tombak by various people, a few were given as tokens of friendship, but most were given because it was believed that they had brought misfortune to the previous custodians, one was given to me because of messages that a woman whom I did not know had received instructions in a dream from her dead husband, one was given to me for safe keeping until somebody in the family concerned was prepared to accept responsibility for its care.

Apart from the items of tosan aji that have been given to me I have one keris that I acquired through a normal commercial transaction. This keris was the central performer in a very unusual occurrence involving a Hungarian psychic who had never even seen a keris until he handled a few that I had, this occurrence took place in the same house with the spiritual presence. This same keris was declared "hot" & "evil" by a man who had been a spiritual advisor to President Sukarno. This same keris moved from the place where it had been left to a different place 3 meters away on the first night it was in my house, my house at that time was the one that did certainly have a resident spiritual presence.

Apart from these things mentioned above I have experienced a number of other inexplicable things throughout my life, things that might be able to be explained as coincidence in some cases, but that in other cases cannot be explained in any rational way.

For example, the knowledge of an acquaintance who burnt to death in bed 5000km away, at the time when it was happening. This was not something that I experienced, rather it was something that somebody who is very close to me experienced and this person does have acknowledged psychic abilities.

I do absolutely accept that there are unseen forces that are present all around us all the time. Everything in this world and beyond is connected.

But I am not one of the people who can cross from one place to the other.

I have never experienced any good fortune, nor any bad luck, that I can directly attribute to anything other than hard work & effort in one regard, and my own stupidity in the other.