Journal of John Winchester (Supernatural)

October 3

Winstedt—Shaman, Saiva, and Sufi: Sir Frank Swettenham has descrbed how a spirit raising séance was conducted by a royal female shaman during the illness of a ruler of Perak some thirty years ago. The magician, dressed like a man, sat with veiled head before a taper, in her right hand a sheaf of grass cut square at top and bottom. This sheaf she took convulsively.

The taper fared, a signal that the spirit invoked was entering the candle. The magician, now supposed to be in a trance, bowed to the taper "and to each male member of  the reigning family present" After many spirits had been invoked, the sick raja was brought out and seated on a sixteen-sided stand (an improvement on the double pentacle called Solomon’s seat) to await, with shrouded head and a square bunch of grass in his hand, the advent of the spirts of the State. Conducted back to bed, Hiss Highness fell later into a swoon attributed to possession by those spirts! At  this royal séance the magicians daughter led an orchestra of "five or six girls holding native drums, instruments with a skin stretched over one side only" and beaten wth the fingers . In an account of yet another séance in Selangor, where  to cure an ailment the magician became possessed by the tiger-spirit, it is said that the ceremony usually took place on three nights and that the same odd number of persons should be present each time. For the reception of the spirit , an artcial bouquet of flowers,  doves and centipedes, all made of palm-leaf was prepared. After an invocation the magician bathed himself in incense, suffered spasmodic convulsions, spoke a spirit language, became possessed, sat with shrouded head, lit tapers on the edges of three jars , of water and rubbed the patent wth a bezoar stone.  Then donning a white coat and head-cloth, he fumigated a dagger, dropped siver coins into the three jars, and gazed to see ther position under the three tapers, declaring that it indicated the gravity of the patent’s ilness. Scattering handfuls of charmed rice round the jars, he put into them improvised bouquets of areca-palm blossom, and plunged his dagger into each bouquet to dispel lurking spirts of evil. Another sheaf of palm-blossom he anointed with oil and used for stroking the patient from head to heel. Next he was possessed by the tiger-spirit, scratched, growled, and licked the naked body of the patient. He drew blood from his own arm with the point of his dagger and fenced with his invisible spirit foe. Once more he stroked the patient with the sheaf of blossom and with his hands. Again he stabbed the bouquets, stroked the patient, and after lying still for an interval recovered consciousness.