How to buy an antique magic amulet. That works !

How to buy

an antique magic amulet

for 25 Euros. That works !

I see some strange little iron balls at an antique shop that I go to every three years.
They resemble bullets, but there are some odd indecipherable squiggles on one of them.
I ask the owner: Luisa, what are they?
I don’t know. Maybe coins.

They intrigue me. I think I see some scales on one: coils of a gigantic snake.
Maybe a dragon.

I go back the next day. At night I’d thought about them.
There are three balls, but one of them seems much more beautiful than the others.
Today, Claudio is in the shop. What are they ?
Don’t know. Got them years ago in Singapore. Coins ?

The mystery is an irresistible challenge for me.
I buy ‘my’ iron ball.
Then, hours of research in books and on the Web.

Finally, the discovery: Scott Semans, probably the world most important numismatic
and pre-coinage (the coins when there weren’t any) expert, offers some balls
identical to mine with this technical info : Iron amulets from Borneo.
Often taken for coins, they are actually etched iron amulets, circa 1950.
Interior areas of Indonesia, probably Borneo.
The belief is that they keep away evil spirits.

Interesting.

I look at my ball with a magnifying glass and the head of a dragon appears –
I had definitely not seen it before – jaws wide open, sharp threatening teeth
and a long tongue that vibrates like a whip. Or a snake.

Gorgeous!

At this point, starting from the very recognizable head, it’s easy to follow
the monster’s body up to the scaly tail that coils around itself.

I write to Scott Semans asking if by chance he has other information
or a bibliography on the subject.
Very kindly, Scott answers me after a few hours.

Open parenthesis.
The truly great ones are always like that: available, they answer you, they are always amazingly humble.

Instead it’s the halfwits, unfortunately often Italians, who don’t ‘lower’ themselves to even answer. They can’t be bothered : they’re too important. They are too busy jerking themselves off. Only intellectually, of course.

Close parenthesis.

My mail motivates Scott to study again some of the objects he’s had in his catalogue for years.
He looks again at a fundamental book (Joe Cribb, “Magic Coins of Java, Bali and the Malay Peninsula”, 1999) and discovers that it’s about Javanese iron amulets (so, not from Borneo).
And then an entire fascinating ‘archeological  thriller’ comes to light, complete with the initial mystery and the final solution. Scott is quite happy to share the solution with me, even though we’ve never seen or written to each other before.
Here’s a summary:

In the 1970s there began to appear on the market in Europe a series of Javanese magic coins which had not been documented previously. The pieces which began to appear in the 1970s were mostly made of iron and had designs applied to them by etching, a material and technique which had not been employed before.

Thanks to the research of Pierre Bauquis, a collector of these objects, an acquaintance of his, Claude Guillot, was able to meet with and interrogate the son of Master of the workshop in Surabaya (East Java) where these ‘antique magic coins’ were made.

The account given to Guillot provides many insights into the processes and motives of creating magic coins:

“Some thirty years ago, my father used to work for a cement company near Gresik (north-west of Surabaya) where there were scrap-heaps of damaged or split metal balls used in the crushers.

One day it occurred to him to take home some of these balls, then to take a wax pipette of the type used for designing batik. He then proceeded to make some wax inscriptions on the metal before dipping it in acid. As some metals fragments presented a concave surface, he drew on them a fine spiral pattern, calling to mind the thumb print of the Supernatural Blacksmith – an old Javanese myth well known to all of us.

In her book Heidi Munan confirms: “Iron was thought to have potentially dangerous supernatural powers and the smiths were generally drawn from the nobility, who were likelier to be better able to control these potent forces. These smiths had personal guardian spirits and kept beads and other amulets among their iron-working tools to protect themselves from harm”.

However, in the case of my amulet, the brilliant photographer Domenico Collura gives me the gift of an important discovery: perhaps it could show the imprint of the Supernatural Blacksmith’s thumb, but certainly one also sees an extremely vivacious snake (the son of the Dragon?) coiled around himself, with a lively little eye and a wide open mouth.

Back to the son of Master of the workshop in Surabaya: “Satisfied with the result,
it occurred to my father to give these objects as presents to friends and neighbors.
He told them they were very old, magical good-luck charms.

Only a few hours later these people started speaking highly of the virtues of these talismans and called for more.

Father kept his secret to himself and set to work to meet this unexpected demand.

His success grew and grew, obliging him to create a veritable workshop where our whole family was employed while carefully maintaining due secrecy.

In order to increase the credibility of these talismans, Dad obtained for himself an old book on Indonesian magic (kitab mujarabat) which enabled him to copy numerous traditional motives known to those initiated into esoteric mysteries.

Thus for twenty years our trade developed, the designs and shapes multiplied to create ever new ‘antique’ amulets and the clientele apparently remained exclusively local.

Then the inevitable happened: some shrewd middlemen got hold of some specimens and, probably in 1977 for the first time, offered these “antique magic talismans” to dealers in Singapore and Hong Kong, whence they arrived in Europe and the United States… Since we always drew each piece by hand, each amulet has an absolutely original design and is different from any other”.

There. That’s the story of my iron ball, mysterious the first time I saw it, fascinating now that I know it’s an ‘antique’ magic amulet. I can only add that, besides the marvellous days of enthusiastic research and entertaining study, the magic amulet really works !

The same morning the amulet entered our house, a registered letter announced that we had won 2 two-way flights free for any European capital.

Not bad for an ‘antique’ magic amulet paid 25 Euros, right?
We still haven’t gone on our free trip.
But for sure when we take off, the amulet will fly with us.