Occultist’s Guide To Jungle Hiking (浅谈深林作业)

An occultist has many reasons to enter a jungle. Perhaps he/she wanted to meditate to increase his/her power, perhaps this person wanted to collect rare herbs or perhaps he/she wanted to summon a powerful jungle spirit to his/her service. Whatever reasons this magician has, a jungle is a dangerous place to enter.

 

Not only a jungle is full of fierce and poisonous flora and fauna; certain landscape such as ravines, holes, swamps and poisonous gaseous etc. may cause injuries if one is not careful. I am no expert in jungle survival but I have collected some knowhow when in a jungle.

 

Before entering:

 

·         One should study the weather patterns beforehand to decide if it is the best time to go into a jungle.

·         On arrival to the entrance of the jungle, stop and look at afar. If there is thick fog, go back and come another day.

·         Offer some tobacco, pop rice, betel leaves and benzoic incense to the watcher of the jungle. (This will save the magician plenty of problems, believe it or not?)

·         Bring light and high energy foods to reduce your load. Previously people bring yam or amorphophallus konjac made foods as these foods are very filling and easy to carry. Now days, we can find high energy foods in shops selling camping gears.

 

In the jungle:

 

·         A tropic jungle is full of poisonous snakes so one should carry some snake poison antidotes and some kaffir limes. All magical traditions will have a set of snake medicines.

·         The kaffir limes is used to prevent any snakes from entering a magician’s resting place. This is done by cutting a kaffir lime into 4 pieces and put the lime sections at four corners of the magician’s camp.

·         Insects are problems at night, so one should take 3 pieces of red chillies, slit it lengthwise and then hang the chillies over a candle or fire flame. That will drive away flying insects at night.

·         Bring some salts to remove leeches and to reduce itchiness caused by bamboo hairs.

·         The worse scenario one will come across is to step into an underground beehive. The stings of these tiger head hornets are lethal. So a serious jungle hiker would bring a piece of thick canvas of some kind just in case. However in the event of emergency and nothing to cover, one should lie flat face down on the ground and recite:

o   "I call upon mountain gods and local earth gods, come immediately from all 8 directions and assist me. Come on your auspicious clouds, help me in distress. Drive away these hornets. As my will, so mote it be!"

·         Missing in the jungle:

o   In case of one has lost one's way, the common method is walk downwards to find water source and not to walk upwards where many people have made a mistake and lost their lives.

o   For magicians with guardian spirits, he/she can call upon his/her spirits or use the kuji-kiri mudra to find his/way out. The spirits will not fail their masters.

·         On returning from the jungle, one should ideally perform a ritual or flower bath to wash away any energy or entities attached to the person.

 

The best choice is of course not to enter a jungle alone and without the knowledge of anyone. The above pointers are just something fun to read about however.