(Continued from Cổ Trùng – Dark Sorcery 2)
Now that you have a bona fide Cổ Trùng that can be at your beck and call, what now? What do you do with it, and how do you do it? Well, as it turns out, you can do quite a bit of damage if you know what you’re supposed to do.
If you’ve ever watched any ancient anime or Asian movies, you will often see various poison masters run around with a bunch of needles which they will throw at the intended victim with deadly accuracy.
These potent needles seem to have been soaked or smeared in some form of poison that is SO DEADLY that it only takes one hit with a single needle to cause the victim to drop to the ground and die an immediate and painful death.
This, of course, is all a bunch of hooey baloney nonsense.
First of all, a real sorcerer doesn’t bother to attack the victim physically. That’s so crass and unrefined. He would much prefer to ‘work from home’, in the ease and comfort of his living room or secret laboratory.
I mean…what’s the point in knowing black magic if you have to put yourself into a dangerous situation and do all the kung fu fighting yourself?
Might as well just jump out of the darkness and mug the victim–it would be more expedient and save the sorcerer years of hard work, feeding all those bugs just to create the poison.
Secondly, while there are real poisons that have been developed to be used as modern-day weaponry, they are very specific to a handful of poisons that are lethal to a human being, such as ricin, VX, BTX, Botox, and Polonium 210. (1).
It is important to note however, that many of these are chemical neurotoxins that are incredibly difficult to procure. For example, in the case of Polonium 210, the only people who would have access to its use would be those world powers with access to nuclear power since they are the only countries able to produce polonium in quantities that could be used as a weapon.
Another difficult to obtain poison is BTX (Batrachotixin), an extremely powerful neurotoxin. It is, however, a steroidal alkaloid produced by poison dart frogs. Now, that may sound like the methodology used to create Cổ Trùng, but it is very far from this ancient technique.
The process literally requires thousands of these dart frogs to produce enough BTX just to kill a single human. This would be almost impossible to do since the frogs can only produce BTX while living in the wilderness of Latin America (they cannot survive in captivity), and currently, there are so few of them that they are considered an endangered species. (1)
In any case, this sort of modern-day poison is not the sort that we are talking about. We are talking about something much more esoteric in nature.
It Is What It Is
First, let’s talk about that part of the Cổ Trùng that nobody ever talks about. Poop.
Am I joking with you? I most certainly am not!
Hexagram 18 should not have been labeled with the single word Cổ (shortened form of Cổ Trùng).
If I had been there to help write the I Ching, I would have suggested in my bombastic genteel manner that we should call it thus:
Hexagram 18: Cổ Shit (蠱屎).
You laugh, but the unvarnished truth is always better than the varnished truth. Never let it be said that I, Taobabe, ever use fancy gilded language to describe something. I am usually quite clear in my diction and word choices, even if those choices don’t evoke the best of images.
Method to the Madness
After the Cổ Trùng has matured and metamorphosized into its final state, this is when the real dirty work begins.
Every day, the sorcerer or his underlings must collect the Cổ Trùng poop from the jar in which it lives, not because he is a nice guy and wants to keep the jar clean and tidy for the poor thing, but because the poop is the main reason for the cultivation of the Cổ Trùng.
Once the sorcerer gets a nice tidy pile of poop, he dries it carefully until it no longer has any moisture left within the organic material.
Then he places the dried poop into a mortar and uses a pestle to grind the poop to a fine dark powder. This powder is then meticulously removed from the mortar and stored within a vial.
And before you ask, I would predict that there is no expiration date, due to the desiccated nature of this poop. As long as it is kept in a dark and dry environment, it should last indefinitely and retain full potency. If moisture should somehow find its way inside the vial and the poop begins to mold, it is most likely no longer effective. It would also start stinking to high heavens as well, I’d imagine.
Since only a tiny amount is needed, the sorcerer uses a needle’s tip to collect a trace amount of the poop powder. This poop-tipped needle is then stabbed into an effigy which has been sympathetically associated with the targeted individual.
Sympathetically-associated Effigy
What in heck is a sympathetically-associated effigy you might ask. This seems to be a very long and convoluted word to describe what Americans know of as a voodoo doll, but in truth, it is not used in the Voodoo religion at all, so it’s quite the misnomer.
Out of respect for those who practice the Voodoo religion, I will be calling it by its descriptive name, the Sympathetically-Associated Effigy, or ‘effigy‘ for short.
FYI: I didn’t get into the detail of a sympathetically-associated effigy, so here is a quick explanation.
A sympathetically associated effigy is a human-shaped doll that is made of whatever material that is at hand (wood, cloth, straw, corn husk, etc.).
The sorcerer then uses a fingernail clipping, a lock of hair, or some blood or semen which he has taken from the target victim to which he incorporates into the doll to create a link (aka a “taglock”) between the doll and the target victim. The effigy is then buried near the person’s home or in a place where he or she must walk over it.
For an example of a famous sympathetically-associated effigy, take a look at the Catskills Crone. It is truly scary to look at.
How it works is that whatever happens to the doll will also happen to the person. This is where the poop-tipped needles come into play.
But before you go thinking that the sorcerer just jabs the poop-needles everywhere on the doll’s body, I will hasten to remind you that most Taoist sorcerers are highly skilled martial artists to begin with and will insert the effigy with the Cổ Trùng poop-needles in various areas that are well-known acupuncture points. (2). After all, you don’t go into this line of work without knowing how to do exorcisms in the event that a malevolent entity escapes your control and takes over another person’s body to wreak havoc.
I touched upon this in my previous post, Lên Đồng 6: Methodology of Exorcism, whereby the sorcerer (who now takes on the role of the exorcist) must use the ceremonial sword and do various martial arts movements with the sword to extricate the negative entity and remove it from this realm of existence.
But I digress…let’s get into the practical application of the practice.
Practical Application of the Cổ Trùng
Okay, so now you’re probably thinking…why the hell would anyone go through this much time and effort to create such a hellish entity. The risk of being bitten to death by just one of the regular poisonous critters alone is very real, but to have to catch over a hundred of them within the time that it takes to feed this demonic Cổ Trùng is just insanely risky.
Then, when the Cổ Trùng is finally mature, the sheer cost and labor of cooking and serving three chickens, three goats, and three pigs within the span of three days is staggering.
That jar must also need to be pretty big to accommodate all of these animals. I would assume it would be best to get baby pigs and goats so all three can fit in at one time, chopped in small pieces…if that’s all that is required.
And don’t forget that cumbersome requirement of having to maintain absolute secrecy about the existence of the Cổ Trùng. If even one whiff of its existence is leaked into the outside world, other more powerful sorcerers will be on the prowl to take it away, using superior sorcery, leaving the original family’s house and home in ruins, their family members–dead.
You’re probably thinking the trade-off must be something quite enticing.
In my opinion, it’s a ‘HELL TO THE NO!!!’.
The karmic retribution from engaging in something like this is so overwhelming so as to be almost unrecoverable.
But for certain specific instances, there are possible reasons why it might be a driving factor, or at the very least, quite enticing. Let’s take a look at a few of the most common reasons why it would be worth someone’s time to try and create something this horrible.
(to be continued)
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Taobabe 