In the Realm of the Diamond Queen, III; 8-9

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pp. 207-212 Part III "Riding the Horse of Gaps"

p. 209

"Riding the horse of gaps,

{cf. gap struck in mt. Helikon by Pegasos (according to Metamorphoses by Antonius Liberalis -- H), who was born from the GoRGon : cf. the name (according to the Metamorphoses 3:138 by Ovidius -- P) GaRGaphie of the valley in mt. Kithairon} ...

p. 210

The horse of distances. ...

Forging spurs

Finished in a day.

 

Used to contain and circle ...

That striped cup

The gilded one ... .

{cf. "gold-shining urns" for voting-pebbles favoring mt. Kithairon (according to KorinnaH)} ...

 

The child of the cobra, {cf. ‘Good’ serpent Agatho-daimon} ...

Soaring to the sun. {Kemian cobra-deities : formed of the spittle of the sun-god; guarding hourly gates passed through by the sun; towing the barque of the sun (C)}

If it has scales

They cross across each other. {cf. serpent on cross, a Franciscan emblem} ...

The scales ... point to its tail,

They point to its head ... . ...

 

The mountain called Jungku

p. 211

With two shoulders, ...

On the summit of the mountain

There’s a wild fig tree, {made of fig-wood was the statue of the god Priapos (PhAW, p. 44; S-W, p. 21), identified as the ‘Good’ according to the book Baruk by Justin (Hippolytos 5:26:32-35)}

A hanging fig tree, ...

Swinging there ... .

{having hanging, swinging ae:rial roots} ...

 

A bamboo that plays the flute,

A bamboo that sings."

{bamboo is made into flutes}

H = http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/OrosHelikon.html

P = http://www.theoi.com/Nymphe/NymphePlataia.html

C = http://www.egyptianmyths.net/cobra.htm

PhAW = Westropp & Wake : Phallism in Ancient Worships. New York, 1875. http://www.archive.org/stream/ancientsymbolwor00westiala/ancientsymbolwor00westiala_djvu.txt

S-W = C. Staniland Wake : Serpent-Worship and Other Essays. London, 1888. http://www.archive.org/stream/serpentworshipot00wake/serpentworshipot00wake_djvu.txt

p. 209 "The "horse of gaps" (kuda sawang) is the spirit familiar who guides her [the shamaness] in the spaces between the mountain and rocks of accumulated knowledge."

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pp. 230-252 Chapter 8

pp. 246, 315 pseudonym of shamaness

p.

Irama

246

" "Irama," ... is the name she was given in a series of dreams. ... She spells the name out in ... the written form ASTARAMA (pronounced, she said, "Irama")".

315, n. 8:10

"Irama means "rhythm" in Indonesian". {cf. [<arabi] /<iram/ (name of an antient city at unknown location); cognate with [<ar.] <urma ‘heap, pile’; <arim ‘vicious’}

pp. 233-241, 247-252 shamaness’s dreaming; dancing and songs

p. 233

"Her father was a great shaman; he is remembered as a panggalung – one who coils, loops, ties – that is, a shaman so powerful that he could gather people from all around through his spiritual charisma."

"After his death, ... [his daughter] began to receive teachings from him in dreams. Soon she was on her way to becoming a shaman herself. ...

p. 234

Since then, her dreams have been visited by other spiritual mentors, who come to teach her songs, choreograph dances, and dictate drawings and writings."

p. 236

The shamaness "rides a flying horse. Later ..., she chooses a flying cobra, a more conventional familiar of Meratus shamans. ... The cobra’s scales map the route of spiritual flight, as it extends both forward and back".

p. 238

"the tree is a ritual stand complementing the rocks’ written text, that is, the scribbled lines that depict the internal knowledge of the shaman to be expressed in the chant." This is "dream-dictated "writing"".

p. 241

"the dreamer in the form of an airplane."

p. 247

"Riding the horse of gaps, singing,

Counting custom and tradition in forty-one paragraphs."

p. 252

"the 130 spirits that she met in her dream ... . ... Leading the way through the air is a fierce spirit, a soldier {cf. Daoist "spirit-soldiers"} ... . Following the spirit is the shaman, the dreamer, in the shape of a multicolored star. Last in line is a chickenlike bird. ... [She,] as star-shaman[ess], stands between the chicken-community and the soldier-spirit."

pp. 245 mythic origin of spiritual inspiration

"Meratus say that when God handed out the Holy Books, the Meratus ancestor ate his and thus ensured ... internal inspiration".

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pp. 253-283 Chapter 9

pp. 262-265, 268 history of the world [some names Muslim]

p. 262

"Tihawa had an iron vulva to match Adam’s iron penis." (according to the Balanghan Dusun version)

 

"Adam and Tihawa had forty-one children, the nabi. [prophets] {cf. p. 247 : "forty-one paragraphs"}

p. 263

"Of the forty children, twenty were boys and twenty were girls. ... After the forty brothers and sisters were married and grown, Tihawa had another child, Nabi Bungkun. This child had neither arms nor legs but was round like a watermelon. {comparison the deity to a watermelon is a commonplace S.ufi adage} (... it was neither male nor female ... .) ...

p. 264

Nabi Bungkan is the iron rice pot that always hangs at the hearth".

 

"And our nabi is Nabi Lahat. {in <arabi^ /lahut/ ‘Godhead, divinity’} ... The Kaharingan [Dayak religion] nabi are Lahat, Daud, and Dar Alah."

p. 265

"This history ... rises and descends, rises and descends. From the top, it descends to the bottom. Then from the bottom, it rises to the top. Then three times, it descends again." {evidently referring to the S.ufi doctrine of successive cycles of evolution and involution of the species}

p. 268

"the history of 777 years, sometimes even 7,777 years."

pp. 271-272 Majapahit

p. 271

"there came to be adat from Majapahit" :

 

#

adat

 

1st

iron statues

 

2nd

iron ladles

 

3rd

dragon daggers

 

4th

china plates

 

5th

pomegranate rings

 

6th

carved scrapers

 

7th

"several kinds of iron goods, ...

 

altogether 141 kinds."

 

Out of Java, "Majapahit extended its reach to southeastern Kalimantan in the fourteen century. In the Banjar chronicles, the story is told that a group from the land of Kaling (... {Kalinga in} India ...) settled in southeast Kalimantan and imported a king from Majapahit. ... the imported king marries the local water nymph and ... sires a royal line, which goes on to rule the Banjar kingdom."

p. 272

royal goods :

 

7 knives

 

7 gongs

 

7 nesting-places

 

7 trays

 

7 metallophones

 

7 "omen stones that cry"

 

"Majapahit’s seven Garagu styles. ... "Garagu 7" is a term used primarily by Dusun when referring to various shamanic styles".

pp. 273, 317 official recognitions of the religion of Meratus

p.

official recognition

273

"In the western foothills in the 1970s, a group of shamans tried to persuade officials to register Balian (literally, "shaman") as a religion.

Meanwhile, on the east side, groups were arguing that shamanism was a form of Buddhism, which had already been recognized as a state-approved religion.

In the 1980s, Meratus began to endorse the term Kaharingan, a Central Kalimantan term for Dayak religion."

317, n. 9:12

"In 1980, Central Kalimantan Dayaks were successful in getting the Department of Religion to recognize Kaharingan as a form of Hindu-Bali, an officially endorsed religion".

p. 275 origin of shamanism with Mambur, the first shaman

"Mambur could chant over a corpse and make it alive again. ...

Mambur travelled everywhere, curing. ... His wife ... killed his favorite child, their youngest. Mambur sensed the death and came home. He brought the child back to life. But he went away again. Again, his wife ... killed the child. Mambur returned and revived the child. This happened seven times. Each time, the wife disposed of the child’s corpse more efficiently, so that it became more and more difficult for Mambur to bring the child back to life. The last time she disposed of the corpse so well that ... Mambur could do nothing. Whereupon, he disappeared."

pp. 276-277 myths about the 2 brethren

p. 276

"Sandayuhan and Bambang Siwara are the two brothers more commonly known as Si Ayuh and Bambang Basiwara. ... Si Ayuh ... the ... older brother, ancestor of the Meratus, ... is also known for ... his defeat of the seven-headed monster, Samali>ing ... . Samali>ing had the power to turn people and their possessions into stone merely by fixing the gaze from one of his heads on them. The Meratus landscape is littered with stone remains of Samali>ing’s victims. Si Ayuh tricked Samali>ing with a spell that turned the giant’s gaze back upon himself, thus transforming Samali>ing into stone cliffs called Gunung Kapala Pitu ("the Seven-Headed Mountain")."

p. 277

"Si Ayuh ... kills the Sky Pig (whose jaw bone is preserved as the V-shaped group of stars in the head of Taurus) with a spring trap made from the constellation we call Orion."

pp. 277-279 legend of the Diamond Queen

p. 277

"Once, ... the rain would not stop, and there was no rice. Carrying a bottle of gold dust and a diamond, Datu Limbur was sent by the people to obtain a king from Banjarmasin. He floated all the way, along the east coast, on a raft of nine dammar logs, following the same route back with the king he had obtained. But the king died en route. The rain would not stop. Datu Limbur set out again, this time with two bottles of gold dust, two diamonds, and a great gold belt buckle. This time, he got Ratu Intan, the Diamond Queen, who hiked over the mountains

p. 278

from the west side to her new seat at the mouth of the S__ River."

 

"Even in hiking over the mountains, the Diamond Queen offered to her storytellers the chance to list all the places she passed. She created a path that is remembered in litanies of the

p. 279

landscape.

The rites and ceremonies she instituted are told in detail; they are a litany of ritual forms.

Another list begins with the local captains that gathered around her and spread her influence."

pp. 269, 278, 280-283 protocol of the shamaness

p.

protocol

269

"Even in informal gatherings in her house, women sit against one wall, and men sit against another; she sits in the middle. ...

Adult men and women did, in fact, eat separately ... . However, children of both genders ate with the women, as is customary among Banjar."

278

She "had been married but had confidently left her husband to give birth to her son alone ... . Her husband did not understand her voices".

280

"Her voices do not allow her to remarry".

281

"She imagines her travel agendas, too, more on a model of a queenly procession ... . About once a year, she goes to the mountains to see her

282

fans there and dispense advice about adat ... . ... she expects to be treated like a queen; people are supposed to come to her with their disputes, questions, and praise."

283

Her public prayer :

"Truly we .. pray to Heaven, ... God, Yek Hak". {[<arabi] /h.aqq/ ‘truth’}

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pp. 285-301 [Part IV] "Reprise"

p. 291 juduh (‘love-relationships’)

"there are juduh that last through (as long as) __"

"a touch"

"fondling breasts"

"becoming lovers"

"two or three months"

pp. 291-294 gestation : soul’s prae-incarnational choice of destiny {cf. Platon : final chapter of the Republic}

p. 291

"Meratus say that the fetus "meditates" (batapa) for nine months and nine days in the womb to find its rajaki, its future livelihood, luck, health, and wisdom."

p. 292

gestation : "the eyes become fibered extensions, and are filled out into a head. ... The mother eats sour food and all kinds of sour things [for those are the desire of the child]."

p. 293

"we must decide what it is we want, coming out into this world. Only then can we be born, we who were held by our mother for nine months and nine days. ... And we ask for our rajaki in this world. ... We are given our rajaki, our life’s wisdom, and we hold this balled up in the palms of our hands. And only then do we emerge from the womb, birthed by the mother. ...

p. 294

In surprise ... we open our fists and our rajaki is scattered. It falls to the ground ... and is scattered across the earth. And the rest of our lives we must follow that rajaki; we must work to follow it wherever it takes us. For it may take us to many villages, and we must always follow to gather it up. And when it is gone, our years are over."

pp. 298-301 viciousness of United States government

p. 298

"CIA officials recently admitted to providing the Indonesian army with death lists ... in 1965, in self-conscious practice of tactics that would be used soon again in Vietnam (Kadane, 1990)."

p. 301

"The United States political climate is changing – with the aggressive U.S. involvement in ... War, with ... the sinking status of the U.S. in world economy".

Kathy Kadane : "CIA Role in 1965 Bloodbath". SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER, 20 May 1990.

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Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing : In the Realm of the Diamond Queen. Princeton U Pr, 1993.