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I'm not up to date on this specific incident, thank you for sharing. I did fall down a rabbit hole earlier in the year reading about some of the insane and prolific cults/sects/sorcerers that seem to bubble up constantly in both Malaysia and Indonesia. Despite the Koran ostensibly forbidding sorcery (and in so doing also tacitly confirms that sorcery is real), there seems to be an incredible demand for magic and (uncharitably) witchcraft all over not just maritime SE Asia, but the entire Muslim world. The gov't of Qatar had a PSA campaign against magical amulets, the Saudi Religious police have a specialized anti-witchcraft department and actually capture and execute a sorceress every couple of years. Indonesia has a lot of problems with sorcerers scamming people out of most of their money, often impoverishing entire families.
It’s quite common at this level of development, see the occult fascination in the Anglosphere between around 1890 and 1914, new age cults and so on. We’ve just moved past it as we’ve advanced into pomo cynicism; they haven’t.
That time period was a fascinating overlap of old world superstition and the rapid advancement of science and engineering in the 1800s. I've always enjoyed the efforts to use the new, highly accurate tools of measurement to quantify supernatural phenomena. The most famous of these being to ascertain the weight of a soul. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_grams_experiment
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How sincere was new age occultism in that era? Was it barnum style showmanship, or did people really believe and act their real life in accordance? The craziest cult practice I encountered personally was a thai woman who said she created real kumanthongs to sell to thai oligarchs. A kumanthong is a stillborn fetus removed from the womans uterus, then preserved by smoking and then wrapped in sanctified talismans. It had magic properties and was said to bring good luck. She was notorious for providing high end escorts in Southeast Asia who did not use condoms, and several guys I know who used her girls wondered if their kids were turned into good luck charms.
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