Invisible Bondage

Beneath the Surface of Desire, Belief and Ritual

After exploring the broader framework of spiritual knowledge in Bali, the conversation naturally turns to one of the island’s most enduring fascinations: love potions, sacred charms, and the practice commonly known as guna-guna.

For many Western visitors, these subjects evoke images of spells, enchantments, and supernatural forces. Yet within Balinese culture, they occupy a far more complex space, one that touches upon desire, intention, personal responsibility, and humanity’s timeless search for influence and control in an uncertain existence. 

As Made Suryasa shared during his recent talk at Usada Bali, understanding these traditions requires looking beyond the dramatic stories and into the cultural logic that underpins them.

The Desire to Influence

At its heart, the practice of guna-guna speaks to something deeply human. People seek love. They seek recognition, protection, success and affection. Quite simply, as human beings we seek control over circumstances that feel beyond our reach. According to traditional understanding, those who pursue the left-hand path may attempt to manipulate energy to influence outcomes, relationships, or individuals. The motivations are often familiar: jealousy, attachment, revenge, ambition, or nsecurity. Most universal in the world of love potions is inspired by unrequited love.

“The desire for shortcuts,” Made observed, “is often what leads people to seek these practices.” This is not unique to Bali. Throughout history and across cultures, people have searched for ways to bend fate in our favour. Bali simply preserves its own language and symbolic systems through which these desires are expressed.

Understanding Guna-Guna

The term guna-guna is often translated as black magic, but the translation is imperfect. In local understanding, guna-guna generally refers to the use of spiritual knowledge to influence another person’s thoughts, feelings, behaviour, or wellbeing without their consent. Stories abound of charms, amulets, oils, mantras. As well as ritual objects, and ceremonial preparations that are designed to create attraction, confusion, illness, fear, or dependency.

Whether these accounts are interpreted literally, psychologically, or symbolically often depends on one’s worldview. What remains important is that Balinese society has long regarded intention as the determining factor. Knowledge directed toward manipulation carries very different consequences from knowledge directed toward healing.

Guna-guna is often translated as black magic, yet within the Balinese worldview it refers more broadly to the use of spiritual knowledge and ritual power to influence conditions, relationships, or individuals. Its moral meaning depends not only on the knowledge itself, but on the intention guiding its use. An it is derived from the Sanskrit word Guna, which has a very different meaning and significance in Hindu Philosophy.

Love Potions and the Meaning of Pengasih

One of the most intriguing topics discussed during the evening was the concept of pengasih. Derived from the word kasih, meaning affection, love, or kindness, pengasih is often translated as a love charm or love potion. Yet the term encompasses a broader range of meanings than romantic attraction alone. Traditionally, a pengasih may be used to enhance personal magnetism, improve relationships or ‘encourage’ goodwill. It is purported to  increase one’s ability to connect harmoniously with others.

In some contexts, it is associated with charisma rather than romance.

Made described stories of amulets worn as necklaces, rings, belts, or hidden objects, each prepared through specific rituals and ceremonies. Some traditions involve oils, sacred smoke, prayers as well as ritualised acts intended to strengthen the practitioner’s desired outcome. Not all such practices are viewed negatively. The distinction, once again, lies in intention. A charm intended to foster harmony differs fundamentally from one intended to override another person’s free will.

The Limits of Power

One of the more grounded observations from the discussion concerned the temporary nature of these practices. Traditional teachings often describe charms and magical interventions as tools rather than permanent solutions. Yet beyond their effectiveness lies a deeper question: what is created when desire attempts to override another person’s will?

A connection built upon manipulation may appear to provide fulfilment, but it is ultimately an illusion — a temporary gratification that cannot address the deeper needs of the human heart. When the influence fades, what remains is often the same emptiness, insecurity, and unresolved suffering that existed before.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that the pursuit of possession can disguise itself as love. The desire to be chosen, to be wanted, or to hold another person close can become distorted into the desire to control. In its most extreme forms, this reveals one of the darker capacities of human nature: the ability to use even the language of love and longing as a means of deception and domination.

The teachings surrounding these practices offer a profound reminder, power without wisdom does not bring liberation. It only creates another form of bondage.

Sacred Timing and Ritual Calendars

Many esoteric practices in Bali are connected to the island’s intricate ceremonial calendar. Specific days, months, and astrological alignments are considered more favourable for particular activities. The timing of a ritual may be regarded as equally important as the ritual itself. This reflects a broader Balinese understanding that human actions exist within larger cycles of cosmic rhythm. Rather than imposing one’s will upon the world, traditional practice seeks to work in harmony with auspicious moments and natural energetic conditions.

The Art of Rerajahan

Among the most visually fascinating aspects of Balinese esoteric traditions are rerajahan, sacred diagrams, symbolic drawings, and ritual inscriptions. These intricate compositions often feature sacred syllables, mystical figures, geometric arrangements, and layers of symbolic meaning. To outsiders they may appear decorative or cryptic.

To practitioners they function as maps of intention.

Made explained that a rerajahan derives its significance not simply from the image itself but from the ritual context in which it is created. The practitioner may consider the recipient’s birth date, personal circumstances, ceremonial timing, and specific purpose while drawing it. The process is deeply personalised. A copied image may resemble the original, but without the accompanying ritual and intention it is not necessarily considered effective.

The Wisdom Hidden in Lontar Manuscripts

Many of these teachings survive through Bali’s remarkable collection of lontar manuscripts. Far from being straightforward instruction manuals, these texts often conceal their meanings behind layers of metaphor, coded language and symbolic descriptions. A plant may not be named directly. A ritual ingredient may appear disguised as a poetic image. A phrase may hold multiple interpretations accessible only through lineage knowledge and oral transmission.

This complexity serves an important purpose. Traditional knowledge was never intended to be separated from wisdom and ethical responsibility. Knowledge without understanding was considered potentially dangerous. This guidance is something we can adhere to more closely, as the result of ready knowledge without wisdom is evidenced in the world today. The ability to take action has a world of consequences when taken without the temperance of maturity and experience, albeit wisdom.

Karma and Consequence

One question inevitably arises whenever discussions turn to harmful spiritual practices.Are there consequences? For Made, the answer was unequivocal. Within the Balinese Hindu worldview, all actions generate consequences. Cause and effect operate whether the action is physical, verbal, mental, or spiritual. The principle of karma applies equally to all forms of conduct.

Those who use knowledge to harm others ultimately become responsible for the effects of their actions. In this sense, the ethical framework surrounding spiritual practice is clear. Power carries responsibility. Intention matters. Actions have consequences. It makes one beyond curious, how these consequences are justifiably ignored by those who practice to do harm. Do they believe in the power they wield, more than in the power of natural law? Of karmic consequence? Or has the delusion of power and control grown so large that it has surpassed universal law?

Protection Through Connection

Perhaps the most profound insight of the evening emerged during the discussion of protection. Many people expect elaborate rituals, secret formulas, or specialised objects.

Instead, Made returned repeatedly to relationship. Honour your ancestors. Respect your parents. Remember your origins. Strengthen your connection to the spiritual forces that accompanied your birth.

Central to Balinese understanding is the concept of Kanda Pat, the four spiritual companions associated with the elements present during birth: blood, amniotic fluid, the protective membranes, and the placenta. These are not viewed as biological waste but as sacred companions who assist the journey into life. Through ritual, remembrance, and meditation, individuals cultivate a relationship with these unseen allies. Protection arises not through fear, but through connection. 

A Living Tradition

Subjects such as love potions, sacred charms, and guna-guna continue to spark curiosity because they inhabit the borderlands between myth, belief, psychology, spirituality, and cultural identity. Yet perhaps the greatest lesson from Made Suryasa’s talk is that these traditions are not primarily about magic. They are about understanding power.

Of Harm and Charms

One of my strongest impressions from the evening had little to do with black magic or love potions themselves.

The room was full. When we host talks about forests, ecology, health, or philosophy, it can sometimes be difficult to fill the chairs. Yet on the evening we discussed black magic, sacred charms, and hidden knowledge, people were standing at the back. We had run out of seats.

It struck me that this says something profound about human nature.

We are endlessly fascinated by what is concealed. We are drawn to mystery, to the possibility that there are unseen forces shaping our lives, and perhaps even more so to the idea that there may be ways to influence those forces. Whether it is through wealth, status, politics, psychology, technology, or spirituality, the question beneath it all remains remarkably similar: how much control do we really have?

As Made Suryasa shared stories and traditions from Balinese culture, I found myself thinking less about the mechanics of love potions or guna-guna and more about the deeper issue that sits beneath them: power.

The Human Condition

The power to attract, influence and protect as well as to heal and to harm.

What interested me most was not whether a particular charm works or does not work. Rather, it was the ethical question that inevitably follows any discussion of power. What happens when our desire to control another person becomes stronger than our respect for their autonomy? What happens when influence becomes coercion?

Whether we understand these traditions literally, psychologically, culturally, or spiritually, the consequences of feeling controlled, manipulated, or stripped of agency are very real. The suffering is real. The loss of freedom is real. The knowledge itself may be neutral. It is the human heart that determines its direction.

The Magic of Self Awareness

My grandmother often told me that there is only power. We create categories such as black and white, left and right, good and bad, as ways of navigating the choices before us. Yet the power itself remains the same. It can be used to heal, or it can be used to wound.

For me, that was the true lesson of the evening. Not a lesson about magic, but about responsibility. About recognising that every form of influence carries an ethical dimension, and that wisdom lies not in mastering others, but in mastering ourselves.