BQ ARCHIVE
Vol I, No. 3
Sept 22, 2004

 
 
 by agnesdv

ARCHIVE #014

Table of Contents 

Archive:
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October


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TRAVEL:

Confessions of a Reluctant Shaman (A Travelogue)

Siquijor Island, even with its white sand beaches and unexplored caves, will always remain a non-vacation spot for me... with its reputation for being the home of the country's shamans, barangan (evil sorcerers), aswangs (witches), sigbin (familar), manananggal (human changelings whose bodies split in two with the upper part flying off to find its victims/food), and a whole  lot others of unimaginable creatures.  Think "Blair Witch" and multiply that into hundreds of the scariest nightmares, and you have an idea of what you're getting into.

In the summer of 1990, two friends and I were challenged to a duel by a powerful sorceress from E. Samar.  To be challenged by a sorceress, someone we considered 'evil' was a terrible insult to our egos.  We considered ourselves then the vanguards of everything that was 'good' and 'right'.  Not to accept was to admit defeat.  Besides it was summer vacation, and we had nothing else to do.  So we accepted.  Battleground: Siquijor Island.  Talk about being stupid -- letting the enemy choose the battleground for you, her own territory.  But we were that arrogant, that young, and that crazy.  

As every Filipino steeped in folklore knows, Siquijor is an island of sorcerers, of magicians, and of frightening mythical creatures. It has earned that reputation whether the locals there like it or not, although the tourism industry has been desperately trying to promote its pristine white sand beaches and interconnecting caves.  If anything should attract tourists to this island, it should be the less powerful ‘sorcerers’ hawking their cures to almost all the incurable diseases in the world, even unrequited love. These sorcerers are everywhere, at the port area, the market, bus stations... you can easily spot them because they annoyingly wave this lapad bottle of gooey liquid in your face. Sometimes, they let you smell some heady stuff first, and if you get woozy and nauseous, you’ll have to buy the ‘cure’ or antidote which they surprisingly have available for P300.

Disguised as researchers of medicinal herbs and potion-making, my friends and I went there with our tambalan guide. A tambalan is a folk healer, a medicine man, a sorcerer. Folklore paints them as kind old men healing the sick with medicinal herbs and oracions. But after Siquijor, I never believed in folklores again. The tambalans we encountered could inflict an illness or death to anyone, and would at a very good price. Thus, I refer to them as shamans, not wanting to taint the image of soft-spoken tambalans I have in my mind. The powerful ones who practiced both ‘good’ and ‘evil’ magic pointed out that good and evil do not exist for them, that they don’t feel the need to split the world into two just so they can justify their actions.  

As I grow older and wiser, I begin to believe that these sorcerers are on the right track. To believe in good and evil, and to call our actions ‘good’ and the other’s actions as evil, makes us think we're impotent to bad karma, our conscience and guilt. We can easily manipulate good and evil to fit our agenda, and isn’t that what we do everytime we want to harm someone, call them evil or monsters to justify our actions? 

The battleground was San Antonio, where everyone seemed to be that summer. Everyone, meaning the who’s who of the sorcerers in the country. It was the Holy Week, full moon, Friday the 13^th, aligning planets, energy vortexed location, all rolled into one significant moment... I was thinking this sorceress we were tracking sure knew what she was doing.

It was the strangest place I’ve ever been. Everything there felt magical, fourth dimensional, my sixth sense on full alert. The locals flocked to us in curiosity, and I was wondering, are they thinking at the back of their minds, ‘hmm... supper...’. I could not help but think that an ordinary human being would have been eaten already. Or have been ‘turned’ into someone like them, or a frog. They had lots of frogs.

We were very careful, while our tambalan guide was the one frantically trying to protect us from the crowd that was turning into a mob. I felt like a showbiz actress, at the same time, body parts for supper. This went on the whole afternoon, and when it got dark, we witnessed these 3 women dancing around a bonfire, laughing gleefully. The bonfire was near our shack. Hm... conclusion by association, my brain was doing doubletakes.

We didn’t sleep that night. We used up all the candles we brought with us, to fend off the dark while our imaginations wove frightening pictures of mythical creatures devouring us. I hate mythical creatures! They’ve been dogging me since I was small, thanks to our yayas’ horror stories to make us sleep in the afternoons. And for the first time in my life, I was face to face in a psychological and physical battle with them. The second night, Friday the 13^th, wasn’t better, we were using up our flashlight batteries, then my camera’s flash, just so we wouldn’t be shrouded in darkness.

No wonder it’s said that when you go to San Antonio, you don’t leave the place sane or make sense to your friends once you’re back in the city.  Constant fear and paranoia, fatigue, lack of sleep and being on our toes all the time were taking their toll on our psyches.  Our tambalan guide finally decided to initiate us into their world. He said, it was the only way we would be able to leave the island whole. Of course I thought he meant whole in body. I didn’t know he meant whole in spirit and in mind. 

Our initiation wasn’t as dramatic as i imagined. Mostly because I thought they were joking when they said we were going to be stabbed twice in the back, deep in a cave somewhere up in the hills. While we trekked up this hill, my friend and I were still laughing and giggling, although we were watchful of wild pigs appearing out of nowhere. We arrived at the mouth of a cave that went steeply down into the center of the earth.  Our guide said it was where the initiations were held.

I’m not going to go into details, except that inside the cave, in the darkness, we WERE stabbed twice, IN the back, THROUGH our hearts, and I felt the coldness of the knife enter my heart, TWICE, and because I’m a sissy, I cried and sobbed and was thankful that my faith was strong enough for me to survive... The test was, if your faith is lacking, you die from the stabbing. I rather think my ignorance about the whole thing saved me.  Unless you consider faith and ignorance the same thing.

As we left the cave, we were surprised to see that a crowd had gathered, probably waiting for our corpses to be brought out. They looked as surprised to see us alive as we were to see them there, but now, instead of a hostile mob, they had turned into a respectful crowd. Or was that fear I saw in their eyes? Their city guests had actually survived a stabbing initiation which made us more powerful than they thought.

So what good did that initiation do me? First, I felt reborn and different. Nature looked different, more alive. I could see the grass growing in slow motion, the leaves greeting us, the wind passing playfully in front of me, followed by a bird, and a butterfly.  I could feel the earth breathing from beneath my feet. Second, along with that vision, I felt that a huge chunk of esoteric knowledge had been dumped into my memory and all I had to do from then on was to remember. Third, I was able to go home whole.

I know that the initiation is secret knowledge in those parts. I know that we had been instructed to keep this secret from the uninitiated. I know that we should guard our newly acquired ‘powers’ or they might be stolen from us. I know that only a few are chosen and fewer still who can say yes, in ignorance (like mine), in faith (like my friends’) and in daily practice (like those who trained since they were kids).

It’s more than 14 years since that summer, and over the years, I’ve learned that there is no such thing as esoteric. Knowledge is around us, information is there for the taking. No one owns it, no one can own it, for it belongs to no one. Knowledge and information are tools to help you move forward, not possessions to burden you and slow you down. ‘Esoteric’ knowledge least of all. Of course, you have to be smart enough to know what you’re looking at. 

But it is because of what I learned during that summer, that I can tell you this with all seriousness. San Antonio, Siquijor, is not an ideal summer vacation spot.

And the sorceress? Coward that she was, she never showed up until years later.   
 

COMMENT

"...over the years, I’ve learned that there is no such thing as esoteric. Knowledge is around us, information is there for the taking. No one owns it, no one can own it, for it belongs to no one. Knowledge and information are tools to help you move forward, not possessions to burden and slow you down."  

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