Dagger Magic

"Yes, but it is more than that," Jigme replied. "To those who embrace the Dagger Cult, the Phurba is both an object and a meditational framework. We would call it a deity, but that term does not have quite the same meaning for us that it has in a Western perspective. In righteous hands, the Phurba can be a powerful force for good; turned to evil, a formidable weapon. Even His Holiness the Dalai Lama recognizes the Phurba practice. He is known to have a Phurba lama in his entourage," Jigme conceded.

"Then, these - dagger practitioners are within mainstream Buddhism?" McLeod asked.

"That is correct."

"Interesting," Adam murmured. "Then despite our evidence to the contrary, we must infer that in its optimal form, dagger practice is benign; if it weren't, the great lamas certainly would have nothing to do with it. Could you perhaps tell us more about its basic tenets?"

"Of course." Jigme's graceful hands gently turned the Phurba as he went on. "In the eyes of those who have received the teachings, Phurbas embody the active aspect of intrinsic awareness or enlightened mind. To more primitive believers, the Phurba constitutes a tool for the procurement of good fortune. This latter view is based upon the notion held by some that all forms of bad luck and unhappiness are caused by demons. By contrast, happiness and good luck are to be secured through the intercession of one who uses a Phurba in the enactment of special rituals designed to drive away or liberate the demons in question."

He paused to survey each of his visitors in turn. "You may notice that I avoid using the word 'kill.' This is because we believe that even demons belong to that broad category of sentient beings whom the Lord Buddha forbids us to harm, for all deserve our compassion."

"So, you don't - 'kill the demons?" Peregrine asked tentatively - though it occurred to him that Adam had not killed the demons guarding the Templar treasure.

A wry smile touched Jigme's lips. "I must admit that the distinction may be largely a semantic one. We use the term sGrol, 'to liberate,' rather than sBad, 'to kill.' The intention is to destroy only the bad qualities of the demon, thus liberating its intrinsic awareness into a higher realm."

"Rather like the apostle Paul exhorting his followers to die to sin in order to be reborn into new life," Adam offered.

Jigme nodded approvingly. "An apt analogy, in Western terms. To destroy only the entity's bad qualities is taken to be an act of Special Compassion. Liberating through compassion in this way is neither killing - an act of anger - nor suppression, the consequence of ignorance. I must confess, however, that my own experience with this fine distinction is mostly academic. 1 am more familiar with the aspects of Phurba having to do with protection."

"Is that what the Dalai Lama's Phurba priest does?" McLeod asked. "Protection?"

The wry smile returned to Jigme's lips. "I believe the priest in question sometimes performs workings for propitious weather. In Tibet, dagger men are also sometimes called hail-masters, because of their ability to avert hailstorms that could ruin crops. If this application seems a bit primitive," he went on with a trace of whimsy, "it is also an indication of its antiquity. The first traces of the Phurba are said to occur at least a thousand years before the coming of the Lord Buddha - fifteen hundred years before the beginning of the Christian era - and not entirely in the Orient. Ritual daggers similar to this one have been found among the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia, in what is now called Iraq. It has been suggested that such implements were driven into the ground to mark out boundaries within which demons might not venture."

"A form of warding?" Adam asked.

"In a sense, perhaps," Jigme allowed. "I have heard it said that these early ritual daggers are perhaps related to the pegs by which nomadic peoples anchor their tents to the ground."

"The logic follows," Adam said. "A three-edged metal tent-peg has obvious advantages over a wooden one, in that you can drive it into stony ground and keep it anchored against wind and weather."

"Precisely," Jigme agreed, rewrapping the Phurba and laying it aside. "And of course, iron and the working of it have long had their association with magic. Given the vast superiority of iron tools and weapons over bronze, small wonder that the first smiths who learned to extract the iron from its ore and forge it were viewed as magicians. In many parts of the world, blacksmiths still retain something of their ancient mystique. I should point out, however, that certain types of Phurba are still made out of wood, if they are meant to mark boundaries or serve as votary objects rather than as instruments for subduing demons."

"But it wasn't any wooden dagger that killed that fisheries officer we've been telling you about," McLeod pointed out.