4. What are the beliefs in different cultures?

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11 comments:

cik fkmughni* said...

hi..guys........this question is very interesting because all of us has our own culture, like me..I'm a Malay girl and as i know i heard many kind of story about supernatural...in Malay culture they believe with supernatural, ghost and the spirit...moreover in ancient times, the Malay spiritually has a mix of animism, Hinduism,and Buddhism. spirit worship is common and these beliefs persisted in rural areas until the middle of 20th century. nowadays all those things still happen but only in certain place which is very obsessed about supernatural and spiritual beliefs. i just want to share with all of you about Malay's supernatural...
Ghost in Malay culture are believed to be active at night time especially during a full moon. the most well-known ghosts include pontianak, langsuir, toyol, hantu raya, pocong and many more...all of them have their own existence history such as pontianak..according to the story pontianak often appear as a beautiful and seductive woman and usually accompanied by strong smell which is scent of frangipani.
by having a sharp object like a nail could helps them from potential attacks by pontianak, because the nail being used to plunge a hole at the back of the pontianak's neck. So that, she wil turn into a beautiful woman. well that is brief story that i get from the film and blogger's opinion..
however in modern Islamic Malay culture, all those ghost no longer valid..but rather it is identified with a demon, Satan and jinn. so...i totally agreed that supernatural really affected towards culture....so friends..what do you think...

hafizah abdullah said...

Hello guys,as Malay and an Muslim girl.I agree with what Fatin had been said..We do believe that there are many kind of ghosts and the other sorts of things that related to supernatural..In Malay culture, there are some problem that happened in household world whereby,if a husband marrying more than a wife, his life will becoming ruin because sometimes he does not realize that his wife will betrayal him using black magic such as 'nasi kangkang' and the others..
This 'nasi kangkang' will make her husband became stupid or some kind like that and obey all of her commands.So that,the husband will not fair with the other of his wife.
Nevertheless,this situation only happen in some of the household world..so,men need to make sure that they do not have any feeling to marry more than one woman..
Sometimes,there are our fate if the destiny said that an incident will happen to us,but as a human that has our own religion,we need to obey the rules that has been given by our religion and pray to our God to make sure our life will be blessed by and can live happily ever after.
We should care our heart from bad things and do a lot of good deeds to make sure we will preventable from doing anything bad to the others and the hatred feeling will not conquer our mind and lastly we didn't think to do the black magic to the others to suffer their life.
So that, we can avoid the supernatural things that can suffer our life..
So,what is your opinion and comments with what i have said just now???let share with us...

cik fkmughni* said...

yeah fiza..actually i have heard about "nasi kangkang"..well i think this is a very disgusting action because in our religion it absolutely prohibited...furthermore all this stuff treat badly and cruelly to other people..there are many ways for them to solve their problem rather than do this thing..so guys think deeply before you do something because it will give impact to your life and people surrounding you....put your trust to the God and more efforts to make our life better and blessing..

Koh Whee Ann said...

supernatural? culture? Ya, there are connection between them…. Lets me talk about the Chinese culture and Malay culture in their believes in ghost,spirit and magic…….
For the Chinese, the entire seventh month of the Chinese calendar is called the Ghost Month. They believe that this is the month in which ghosts and spirits are believed to emerge out from the lower world to visit earth. Activities of the festival include preparing ritual offerings of food, and burning ghost money (or paper money) to please the visiting ghosts and spirits as well as deities and ancestors. Other activities include burying and releasing miniature paper boats and lanterns on water, which signifies "giving directions to the lost ghosts." Normally, wedding ceremony will never be held in this month or any renovation work carry out because it is believe it will bring bad luck.
How about malay culture? I had found out that different belief in malay culture that is magic! I’m quit curious about it because I had never seen how is the ceremony going on….but here I m going to talk about it.
For the Malays, a bomoh or dukun is a shaman. Some bomohs use cemeteries to summon spirits to fulfill requests by supplicants, while others only deal with a single spirit. It is said that sometimes the bomoh selects the spirit, while other times, it is the spirit who selects the bomoh. Spirits can also be used to possess peoples, cause sickness and miseries and many other bad things. Most of the times individual will refer to the bomohs if the face with disease. The bomoh's original role was that of a healer and their expertise was first and foremost an in-depth knowledge of medicine herbs and Malay geomancy. The bomoh works with rituals or jampi, which is derived from the verb menjampi, meaning to cure by magic.

Geh Cha Long said...

ohhh.... About this question.. I will focus more on my own culture. As Koh Whee Ann had said, according to the chinese calender, there is a month called Hungry Ghost Festival or Zhong Yuan Jie. It celebrated on the 7th Lunar month which fall on 3rd November 2009 this year. It was believed that "Gates of Hell" will be opened and the dead will return to visit their living relatives. The Chinese feel that they have to satisfy the imprisoned and hungry ghosts in order to get good fortune and luck in their lives.

In other words, it was a time when the "Good Brethren", ghosts from the underworld, come back to earth to feast on the victuals offered by the living. Over time the Ullambana Festival and Ghost Festival have melded together to become the present day Zhong Yuan Putu or "Mid-origin Passage to Universal Salvation."

At this moment, you can saw lots of chinese will offered to the dead and offerings of food such as chicken, vegetables, fruits, bean curd and white rice. Those foods are placed at street corners and roadsides to appease the spirits. This is believed to prevent the spirits from entering their homes and causing disturbances in their households.

On top that, activities such as praying and burning the "hell money" (replica money notes) for the dead are part of the process to celebrate Hungry Ghost Festival. Some even burn paper cars, house, handphone and more for their dead relatives. By burning such paper handcrafts, they believed their relatives will receive such kind of "models" and live comfortably in their own world. Once the spirits live well, they are hoped to bless for those who are still alive in this world.

cik fkmughni* said...

wow..I'm glad to know that Chinese also has ghost month like cha long stated Hungry Ghost Festival..well i thought there is only Halloween Festival which is usually celebrated in west country like America, Canada and others..but now I want to share about Toyol story, as koh wee said that in Malay culture they have bomoh or shaman..well toyol and bomoh are strongly related..
Toyol is a mythical spirit in the Malay mythology of south East-Asia. it is a small child spirit invoked by a bomoh from a dead human foetus using black magic.It is possible to buy a toyol
from such a bomoh.
A person who owns a toyol uses it mainly to steal things from other people, or to do mischief. According to a well-known superstition, if money or jewellery keeps disappearing mysteriously from your house, a toyol might be responsible. One way to ward off a toyol is to place some needles under your money, so that toyols are afraid of being hurt by needles.

Some say that toyol has its origins from Mecca near the Kaaba (the belief refers to the Pre-Islamic Era where the Arabs used to kill their children and bury them all around Mecca. The Chinese name for the toyol is guǐ zai (literally "ghost child"). The corresponding term in the Hokkien dialect is kwee kia with "kwee" meaning "ghost" and "kia" meaning "child".

People normally assume the appearance of a toyol with that of a small baby, frequently that of a newly born baby walking in nakedness with a big head, small hands, clouded eyes and usually grey or green skin. More accurately, it resembles a goblin. It can be seen by the naked eye without the use of magic and obviously scary.. . According to other stories, a toyol must be treat nicely and fed with blood from a rooster.
In old village tales, people keep toyols for their sake. They use such spirits for theft, sabotage and other minor crimes. Serious crimes, like murder, are usually beyond the capability of these toyols. A person who suddenly becomes wealthy without explanation might be suspected of keeping a toyol. The toyol is kept in a jar or an urn, and hidden away in a dark place until needed.
What happens at the end of the "contract" is not very clear. It could be that the tablet, along with the urn, is buried in a graveyard (with the relevant rituals), and the spirit is then laid to rest. An alternative method is to dispose them in the sea. Or else, a toyol gets passed down in a family through the generations. This seems to suggest that once you obtain a toyol, not only are you stuck with it for the rest of your life, but all your descendants will also be condemned to own it like Saka.
Although seemingly cunning, toyols are supposedly not very intelligent. It is said that they are easily deceived by marbles and sand and strands of garlic hanging on the door post or placed on certain parts of the house. The toyol will start playing with these items until it forgets its task at the victim's house.

Geh Cha Long said...

wow... thanks Fatin! I learn a lot about toyol. It sound very disgusting and I sincerely advise to all of you. Never ever touch such kind of things. Once you touch it, it will follow you for the rest of your whole life. Based on the belief in supernatural, there is another interesting thing that I would like to share with you all.

It is called “Fu Jau”, in chinese means Fu and Jau, Fu is the yellow or red paper talisman that taoist write, as you could see those in the chinese vampire movies used by the taoist to control the vampires! Writting a Fu is very hard. It must be done by some MASTER because Fu is something that required lineage to work. If people just go out and buy some books of Fu writting, there is no way the Fu will work. That is because of the safety reason. If people can just buy books and do it, it would be very very dangerous because that means people can then just buy a book of evil fu and then use it on their enemies to take revenge and make then crazy or kill them in instant.

Fu could be written on paper, cloth, stones and wood or more. The paper could be yellow, red, white, black, green or blue. The reason of using different color paper is because of the five element system theory. It is made of hay and eggs so it is eatable and it is very light in weight, just like a bit heavier than tissue paper. They could be bought at the chinese fungshui stores or from some special stores that sell taoist stuff.

The red ink in Taoism fu writting is special, it is mix with some herbal stuff. With the red ink, a chinese calligraphy pens is needed, which is made with sheep fur. With a good pen, we could achieve the best result in the energy attunement from writting fu. After writting the fu, we have to stamp the fu with a certain stamp. Different lineage have different stampes that do different things. These are very confidential to all lineage because stamping means we do have the authority to run and use the fu.

After stamping, the fu then can be said 90% completed. Now we have to take the fu to our altar and activate it. Then we add a few spells to the fu.

After done with the altar, we have to add our own lineage sign to the fu and then the fu could be activated for use. This is hard to explain but it would be passed to us from our master. Without this, the fu could not work in any way. This represented our rights to run a fu and the power to run the fu.

When the fu was used, we must always thank the altar for the fu(s) we have used every month. So we have to do worshipping on the 1st and 15th with different offerings to pay respect to the grandmasters and immortals who helped us out.

Koh Whee Ann said...

I got additional on the using of ‘Fu’. ‘Fu’ not only use by Taoism but also tâng-ki merely to performs a service in the temple. It is usually for good purpose. It is given to safeguard the person who acquired it. It is not to curse people unless those seek private service from private tang-ki.

Koh Whee Ann said...

Conclusion.....
Supernatural belief are still believe by our generation that’s why there are still many supernatural phenomena in our culture.
Supernatural beliefs have existed in many cultures for many decades. Different culture make different claims about the "truth" of their own beliefs. We are not in a position to question their belief because different cultures have different perspective on supernatural. It is what their culture believes that is passed on and on through their generation. At times individual interests may cause a person to have confusion on what is happening. It may cause curiosity, speculation and even fear if the feeling is not handle properly

hafizah abdullah said...

so interested to live with a lot of cultures in Malaysia..we can learn a lot of things that we didn't know especially our culture's supernatural..

i really not know about the supernatural in the Chinese culture..
according to what i had seen in the movie for a long time ago,we can see that Chinese ghost will jumping around when the piece of paper that stick on the dead body forehead had peel off..for that time,i felt really funny because most of the ghost stories just made as a humour stories..

according to what fatin had said,i agree with the fact that been given by her..according to my neighbour,she is come from javanese family and had to keep the saka that had been given by her late mother..so that,she refuse to keep the saka and the saka had affected their life everyday..the saka had been threw away by a Siamese shaman to the deep sea and it can't come back until someone that need it back..

my mother said that we cannot pick or take anything from the house that keep the 'hantu raya' as the guardian of their house because it will asked back the things that we took if we didn't got the permission from the 'hantu raya' keeper..fantastic right??

in the other hand,have all of you heard the malay supernatural that called as 'susuk'??
well,let me explain about what is actually a 'susuk'..'susuk' is one kind of black magic that has been used as especially by women who want a beautiful faces.the woman that wear 'susuk' can attract a lot of men to see her because the glow of her face make them looked really gorgeous.but the are forbid to see a mirror because they look so ugly in the mirror.sometimes,their faces are actually not nice at all can become so pretty by using the 'susuk'..so,wee ann and fatin want to try it??hehe..i will forbid myself from join this way to be beautiful because i think it really hurt because we need to cultivate a gold or jewelery in some part of our faces..scary right?so don't you ever think to try it even just once.

so the conclusion that i want to make is dont you ever dare to trouble the other people using he supernatural things because it is probihited by our religion and can suffer their life..so that when we trapped someone else,we will get the same heavy reciprocation by our God.we should be grateful towards our destiny and try to respect each others..

Koh Whee Ann said...

haha,i got some addition for chinese culture...for this topic we really can talk a lot about it...beside that ghost festival that happens in the seven month of Chinese lunar calender is an important date to remember the death ones, Chinese peolpes do beliefs in connection with ancestors(soul)by the way of "maan-mai".This "maan mai" which means there is a medium that can communicate with the dead ones or their ancestral spirit.When this communication medium is going on,there are beyond our conscious thinking the "spirit" able to answer the question ask by human (death's family members) correctly.
As for Christian, they just belief the existence of vampires and angel.They do not belief in reincarnation.They belief peolpe after die will just become an angels.
there were a big differences between christian and other races of cultures are!