Satintail Soldiers (茅草兵)

Imperata or satintail (茅草) is a type of tropical grass also commonly known as weeds. 

Satintail roots is a type of herbs used in Traditional Chinese Medicine to treat heat related illnesses. Besides its roots, satintail has another magical uses especially within the Indochinese communities.

It is not common to find satintail grasses being displayed on a standard Taoist altar because the Chinese believe that satintail belonged to 'yin' energy. If satintail is placed onto a standard Taoist altar, it attracts wandering spirits.

However, I have seen staintails being displayed on a Vietnamese altar quite often. And a few times on a Cambodian altar too. Interesting speaking, the ritual to evoke Thai ghost kings also calls for a master to pluck a piece of satintail from mountain or jungle as a means to invite those spirit kings to the altar.

Satintails are sometimes used in place of rice stalks in the making of manikins. There is a difference on the use however so make no mistakes.

A rice stalk manikin (稻草人) is used to summon human souls and belongs to the 'yang' type of rituals implements.

On the other hand, a satintail manikin (茅草人) can only be used for summoning dead or evil spirits for black magic purposes.

In Taoist magic satintail grasses can be used to enhance a Taoist's sixth sense because the wide spread of these weeds. In old days, Taoists would go to a few mountain peaks to collect satintail grass. It is believed that by collecting grasses from different locations and placed onto an altar, a practitioner would be able to perceive changes over a thousand mile distance.

Now practically no one would put grasses onto an altar for the Chinese at least. Maybe this practice is adopted by Vietnamese sorcerers and practise until today. One thing for sure is that the existence of grass in Vietnamese altar is meant to congregate spirit than for sharpen one's sixth sense.

The use of satintail manikins (soldiers) in Taoist magic notmally belongs to the 'yin' altar (阴坛). I have seen satintail soldier rituals or some thing similar like that in a Taoist's altar in Taiwan. It was quite a surprise to me at that time.

The ritual to keep satintail soldiers is simple and primitive, it somewhat resembles the standard Taoist 5-ghost rituals except that the material for the soldiers is made of satintail grasses.

We would need 5 satintail soldiers of around 8 inches tall. These 5 satintail soldiers are placed in the center, left, right, front and back. An incense burner is placed in front of those soldiers. That is all to it. No candles should be burnt for obvious reasons and the altar for the satintail soldiers should be kept as dark as possible.

After the setup is ready, a practitioner should recite mantra and make offerings. For best results animal intestines can be offered to the solders twice monthly.

If the ritual is successful, the practitioner should find traces of satintail grass around his house. This means the soldiers are alive and ready for deployment.

Satintail soldiers are mainly used to guard orchards or for carry out curses. They are most effective in dark and damp places where fires cannot be started. I find them to work best for those herbs collectors who need to enter the jungle often. These soldiers can also be used to 'transfer' one's luck to our own use as we shall see later.