No Jay, your thoughts in respect of spiritual content in a keris were not entirely wrong.
Keris "knowledge" is knowledge of belief systems, and different people & groups of people hold differing belief about many keris related things. What I attempted to give a superficial overview of was what is involved in making a keris that is intended to become a pusaka, or heirloom, keris. What I touched on is only one tiny part of the entire belief system that relates to that type of keris. Keris other than a pusaka can also be believed to hold some sort of esoteric power, and these beliefs cover other aspects.
However, to have a chance of understanding any of these belief systems, it is absolutely vital to have an extremely good understanding of the people, the societies and the culture. It is simply not possible for a person from a different cultural & societal background to understand the way in which people from a different culture & a different society see the world in which they live unless that foreigner has acquired an in depth understanding of the subject people & their socio cultural environment.
Then of course we have the problem of time, & time distorts perspective, so even a person from the same socio cultural framework, but living within a different time period might have greater or lesser difficulty in understanding how somebody from a prior time period understood a similar thing.
The dhapur or form of a keris has nothing at all to do with whether or not it might hold some spiritual or esoteric content. The form can sometimes relate to talismanic beliefs, but those talismanic beliefs are again not related to the spiritual or esoteric beliefs.
The keris has been a part of the culture of some peoples in SE Asia for well over 1000 years, the ways in which it has been thought of over that period of time have changed, and in fact have been subject to ongoing change. The ability of the belief systems to change permits the keris to continue to conform to the needs of the peoples who have the keris as a part of their cultures.
In respect of photos of some of my own work, I do not have any photos readily available. I have no problem with making photos of my work available, & I will make a note that it is something I will attend to when I have the time.
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