Note: Pasensya na guys, it turns out that I cannot reveal the details of my tawas reading. If you're wondering if it's true or not, the answer is yes. Someone did put a spell on me. Two days after the healing and I feel much better. However, total recovery would need more faith to the ancient practice, and time to complete the healing process.
---
From the National Geographic Magazine
September, 1961
Bhutan: Mountain Kingdom Between Tibet and India
"The man, I was solemnly informed, had been attacked by a spirit.
He burned with a painful fever until the local witch doctor, diagnosing the illness, prescribed a massage with salt and juice of a jungle plant called majeeta. Immediately the scratches stood out: hundreds of scarlet marks covering the victim's back, shoulders, and arms. This was a good omen. Had the scratches not appeared, the man would almost certainly died.
He could have been clawed by a rabid cat, but what cat glazes a grown man's eyes with such fear? No, clearly it was the work of a sounday, a spirit.
This I was told by no less an authority than His Highness King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk, 33-year-old ruler of Bhutan. He had had the victim, a servant, stripped to the waist for my inspection in the ornate sitting room of the Royal Palace at Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. It was a room fit for such exotic drama: leopard and tigerskin rugs on the polished floor, carved and painted furniture, and richly painted walls.
I had been a month in Bhutan, and already I was conditioned to believe in witches, ghosts and clawing spirits.
I had been warned before entering the country that in Bhutan the extraordinary is often commonplace and the unexpected happens. Ghost and apparitions are so familiar that they give their names to valleys and districts. Black magic is a part of life.
The sounday, I learned can assume the shape of a dog, jackal, pig, or even a ball of twine. The ball of twine manifestation is the most terrible. In it a man can become hopelessly entangled and die."
---
When I was a kid no less than 10 years old, my sister was played upon by a White Duwende who lives in our backyard. At night during her regular bouts with high fever, she would suddenly get up from bed looking disturbed and disoriented. She would scream and wail for no reason at all and point her finger at a corner as if to tell us that someone was there. However, not a soul or a breath of air can be seen or felt in the corner where she was pointing at.
She was four years old when it happened.
Many years later, I would still seek a mangtatawas when I felt that something was disturbing me. Most of the time, my assumptions were correct. Usually I became a victim of an usog. There was a time I disturbed an entity who resided in our bathroom. I had to put a candle wax wrapped in a paper under my pillow for several days. The mangtatawas said that it would serve as my protection against the entity's supernatural powers.
Now you ask me why, despite my high technological awareness and western views in life, I still believe in such superstitious encounters?
The answer is simple. Life would never be that interesting, if everything in the world can be answered by simple logic and empirical studies alone.
---
From the National Geographic Magazine
September, 1961
Bhutan: Mountain Kingdom Between Tibet and India
"The man, I was solemnly informed, had been attacked by a spirit.
He burned with a painful fever until the local witch doctor, diagnosing the illness, prescribed a massage with salt and juice of a jungle plant called majeeta. Immediately the scratches stood out: hundreds of scarlet marks covering the victim's back, shoulders, and arms. This was a good omen. Had the scratches not appeared, the man would almost certainly died.
He could have been clawed by a rabid cat, but what cat glazes a grown man's eyes with such fear? No, clearly it was the work of a sounday, a spirit.
This I was told by no less an authority than His Highness King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk, 33-year-old ruler of Bhutan. He had had the victim, a servant, stripped to the waist for my inspection in the ornate sitting room of the Royal Palace at Thimpu, the capital of Bhutan. It was a room fit for such exotic drama: leopard and tigerskin rugs on the polished floor, carved and painted furniture, and richly painted walls.
I had been a month in Bhutan, and already I was conditioned to believe in witches, ghosts and clawing spirits.
I had been warned before entering the country that in Bhutan the extraordinary is often commonplace and the unexpected happens. Ghost and apparitions are so familiar that they give their names to valleys and districts. Black magic is a part of life.
The sounday, I learned can assume the shape of a dog, jackal, pig, or even a ball of twine. The ball of twine manifestation is the most terrible. In it a man can become hopelessly entangled and die."
---
When I was a kid no less than 10 years old, my sister was played upon by a White Duwende who lives in our backyard. At night during her regular bouts with high fever, she would suddenly get up from bed looking disturbed and disoriented. She would scream and wail for no reason at all and point her finger at a corner as if to tell us that someone was there. However, not a soul or a breath of air can be seen or felt in the corner where she was pointing at.
She was four years old when it happened.
Many years later, I would still seek a mangtatawas when I felt that something was disturbing me. Most of the time, my assumptions were correct. Usually I became a victim of an usog. There was a time I disturbed an entity who resided in our bathroom. I had to put a candle wax wrapped in a paper under my pillow for several days. The mangtatawas said that it would serve as my protection against the entity's supernatural powers.
Now you ask me why, despite my high technological awareness and western views in life, I still believe in such superstitious encounters?
The answer is simple. Life would never be that interesting, if everything in the world can be answered by simple logic and empirical studies alone.
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