The East Javanese town of Ponorogo, nestled in a remote valley between two extinct volcanoes, has long had a reputation throughout the island for the magical powers and sexual potency of its inhabitants. It has a long history of violent and radical politics, with a well-established tradition of rebellion. Two figures central to this image are the warok and gemblak. The term warok is said to originate from the Javanese words uwal and rokan meaning to be free from forced labour.
[1] Due to their martial and magical abilities, the warok were often advisers and strong men for the local ruler, and hence free from the obligations of ordinary villagers. Another popular interpretation suggests that the term originates from the Arabic word waro'a, meaning an ascetic, or one who practises mysticism. Onghokham draws attention to the influence of warok and jago (men of prowess] as leaders in village political life.[2] The warok was rarely part of the official government, and thus played a somewhat ambiguous role, residing in the margins of social and political life. On the one hand his standing amongst villagers made his support crucial for any aspiring ruler and he often acted as an agent for higher authorities. At the same time, however, his unofficial status also made him a potentially dangerous adversary and troublemaker. The warok was a power broker, an intermediary between higher and lower powers, in the concrete and cosmological sense. His authority was intensely personal, depending on mastery of invulnerability, silat [martial arts], magic, and religious knowledge, as well as the fear and admiration with which villagers regarded him.
The warok tradition finds its roots in a mythology of rebellion. According to one popular historical account, the warok tradition began with Ki Ageng Kutu, the court poet of the last king of the Majapahit kingdom, Bra Kertabumi, in the fifteenth century.[3] Angered at the political influence of Kertabumi's Chinese consort, and the king's endemic corruption, which he saw as a sign that the kingdom would soon come to an end, Ki Ageng Kutu deserted him, establishing a parguron [school for the study of esoteric knowledge] where he taught local young men invulnerability magic, martial arts, and ilmu kasampurnaan ['science of perfection'] in the hope that it would form the basis for a revival of the Majapahit kingdom. Students of Ki Ageng Kutu were known as warok. As a devoted adherent of Tantrayana Buddhism Ageng Kutu believed that spiritual strength could only be achieved through the negation of physical desires. Warok were said to follow a strict regime of ascetic discipline, one of the parguron's rules being that they were forbidden to have sexual intercourse with women. This prohibition was predicated on the belief that the resulting loss of sperm would deplete their supernatural powers. To aid them in their endeavour, each warok enlisted the aid of a young boy known as a gemblak who acted as a 'substitute' woman. Realising, however, that his small band of warok could never defeat the forces of Kertabumi in an armed struggle, Ki Ageng Kutu used performing arts to propagate his political message amongst the local population and thus build a movement of popular resistance. The dance drama that he created, known as reog, satirised king Bra Kertabumi and his court. A spectacular tiger mask known as a singabarong, the lord of the jungle, symbolised Kertabumi, whilst the fan-like peacock perched on its head represented his Chinese consort and the influence that she wielded over him. The effeminate jatilan [hobby-horse] dancers known as gemblak satirised the weakness of Majapahit's army, which contrasted dramatically with the very real strength of the warok who wielded the singobarong mask, weighing over 50kg, by a wooden strut held between his teeth. The hideous red faced clown Bujannganong represented Ki Ageng Kutu himself, his sexually provocative and acrobatic dance movements making a mockery of the affected refinement of royalty.
Troubled by the growing popularity of Ki Ageng Kutu's reog, Kertabumi's forces mounted a series of attacks on his parguron, quickly defeating the warok rebels. The parguron were disbanded and warok practices outlawed. However, several of Ki Ageng Kutu's students continued their esoteric studies in secrecy. Ki Ageng Kutu himself is believed to have performed moksa. Due to its popularity amongst villagers, reog performances were still permitted, but the satire and political critique were replaced by legends from the Panji cycle of myths with the addition of several new characters taken from Ponorogo folklore: Kelono Sewondono, Dewi Songgolangit, and Sri Genthayu.[4] The Ki Ageng Kutu story can in many ways be read as a prototype for the warok's relationship with the state and the image of the warok as an idealistic rebel. From its beginnings through the colonial era and into the present day warok culture has regularly experienced intermittent periods of prosperity, suppression, and recuperation at the hands of colonial and indigenous authorities.
In contemporary Ponorogo there are two contrasting sets of discourse which are seen to characterise warok: as a forceful, spiritually enlightened, charismatic leader and inspired artist, or as a ruthless predator, sexual deviant and criminal. It is commonly held that there are two types of warok: the warok sejati, or true warok, and the warokan, or pseudo warok, also a euphemism for a thief or bandit. Indeed, aside from informal leadership and esoteric learning, warok culture has frequently served as a pose for marginal and criminal elements within traditional Ponorogo society. According to the contemporary warok Kasni Gunopati, the ideal 'authentic' warok has the soul of a satriya [noble warrior] and acts without self interest [pamrih] whilst the warokan uses his supernatural powers for his own personal gain.[5] Yet both are endpoint examples of an ideal-type continuum. It is in the ambiguous space between these two representations that warok culture draws derives its power. The axis around which these two contrasting discourses of the warok revolve is the idea of kesaktian, supernatural power and potency.[6] Kesaktian in itself is 'beyond good and evil,' its possession not indicative of any particular code of ethics or morality. It has no intrinsic properties, only situational ones. The warok, as a potent individual, resides in an interzone of ambiguous potentiality. For some, he is a 'criminal' or 'revolutionary,' to others a leader and activist. The negative image, which the indigenous elite and colonial officials associated with the warok, was in part an effect of the increasingly bureaucratic and conservative political structures that began to develop after the political upheavals of the 1920s.[7] The warok's indiscipline, questioning of hierarchy, shallow loyalties and volatile sense of honour all impeded the formation of the colonial state. Due to its association with the troublesome warok, the Dutch colonial government prohibited reog performances from 1912 until 1932. As one Dutch administrator stated 'reog attracts large numbers of people seeking supernatural power, which undoubtedly poses a threat to security.'[8] As far as rural society was concerned, indeed, the warok came to be considered as semi-sacred figures. The warok's spiritual quest involved a dissemination of the esoteric knowledge associated with the political-spiritual elite to popular culture. The concept of kekebalan [invulnerability] attributed to warok was especially stressed within rural leadership, and in that sense it constituted a counter-elite value, contrasting with the quality of wahyu [divine providence] that was so important to aristocratic leadership as well as to the post-independence Indonesian government. The warok was kebal to the oppressive powers of the state, and it was because of this invulnerability that he could get away with so much.
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