The Babaylan woman

It’s the centennial year of women and there’s much to celebrate about, not least of which is the renewed interest in the babaylan, the recognition of her power and the respect townspeople bless her with. Who were the babaylans? Fe Mangahas should know, having done much work on them, on the babaylans’ prowess, in the course of her being a feminist out to prove the strength and superiority of women over men, except over her devoted Roger!

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Babaylan was the name given to a native priestess by the Ilocanos and the Tingians of Abra in the 1500s. The babaylans were called bilian down south in the Tiruray’s world.

In Bicol, these women were known as baylan. From north to south, there were similarities in their names, which proved that we belonged to one Austronesian family. They were also called daitans by the Visayans because they befriended particular diwatas.

According to Henry Scott, an ethnographer of the ’70s, the babaylans were shamans, spirit mediums, given to seizures and even trances during which they spoke in the voice of a diwata. The voices of spirits came out of the babaylans as they acted out their orders, living out conflicts in the spirit world while in a trance. She could, while in her spirit world, unknowingly brandish spears, foam at the mouth, and often become violent enough to require restraint.

The babaylans were mostly women, but they could either be male or male transvestites called asog. These babaylans arrived at their calling through attacks of illness or insanity, which could only be cured by accepting the "call," and then by attaching themselves as alalays and apprentices to older babaylans who were frequently relatives. Their remuneration was a designated share of the people’s offerings. Consequently, after the session, choice cuts of pigs were offered or chickens were given to the babaylan after her paganito, or performance.

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Prominent Visayan datus from Cebu, who sponsored the paganito, gave the babaylans heirlooms, like porcelain plates or gold ornaments, for driving away evil spirits and pestilence or curing the sick.

There were also charlatans and pretenders that Father Mateo Sanchez, an Augustinian missionary in the Visayas, wrote about in 1617. One babaylan in Bohol attracted a crowd of worshippers to make sacrifices on the seashore with the promise that their ancestors would appear in a golden boat. Nothing happened.

There were no temples built to honor the babaylan or her paganito, but small platforms or sheds were built at the entrance to the village as places of offerings and divination, also in private homes of relatives, in the fields, at the grave sites or sacred spots along beaches or streams, where little rafts could be launched to carry away disease and bad luck or pestilence, like locusts or rats, and carry them to the sea as they floated away. Some paganitos were by nature seasonal, and some sought relief from a public crisis, like drought or pestilence. All that the babaylans could achieve.

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Again, Fr. Mateo Sanchez described a solemn paganito in Cebu: "The site was adorned with green branches, palm-leaf cloths and colorful blankets and the offerings – red blossoms, roasted fish, rice and millet cakes wrapped in leaves and a piece of imported cambay cloth from India – were set out on large plates. A live large hog, raised and fattened for the purpose, lay bound on a grass mat, as cacophonous music was provided by gongs, drums and resonant porcelain plates. The babaylan was an old woman wearing a headdress, topped by a pair of horns, and accompanied by a second medium, both carried bamboo trumpets, which they played and spoke through. They both proceeded to dance around the hog with scarves in their hands, acting out a dialogue between the spirits possessing them, drinking wine on their behalf, and sprinkling some of it on the hog.

"Finally, a spear was given to the presiding babaylan. With it, she began a series of faints and mock thrusts of her spear at the hog as the tempo of her movements increased to a frenzy, and then, with a sudden thrust, ran the victim hog through the heart with unerring aim.

"The foreheads of the main beneficiaries of the ceremony were marked with the blood of the victim, whose wounds were then stanched and the mat that had been bloodied during the sacrifice carefully burned. The babaylan was then divested of her accouterments and awakened from her trance, while the hog was butchered and cooked.

"The feasting then began, everybody receiving a share, though the flesh touched by the spear was reserved for the babaylan. Some of the meat was taken down to an altar on the seashore or riverbank where, after prayers, were placed on a little raft together with the altar and all other paraphernalia and set adrift. This brought the ritual to a close though the celebration continued."

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Fe and I reminisced about the ancient Isabela-Samal tribe ritual of the boat ceremony called tulak balah, an animistic practice from Mindanao we discovered up north in the ’80s. Culture really never ever dies.

The vocabulary of the paganito was ginayaw in Cebu, which was the offering of spherical yellow rice cakes, and is similar to the Samal and Iranun offerings called pagbubuwaya. These are yellow rice cakes shaped like a crocodile and offered for animistic sessions in Maguindanao, Tawi-Tawi and Basilan, largely discouraged by Islam.

In Cebu, tinorlok was the hog reserved for sacrifice. Chicken was required of the Mindanaoans and the Talaandig of Bukidnon. Bani was the required sacred mat to be burned. Incense was burned during the Samal’s sea offering in taluksangay at Zamboanga City. Taruk was the babaylan’s dance. Santa Clara pinung-pino was the tune the Isabela-Samal’s danced, too. Bodyong was the babaylan’s bamboo trumpet. The violins in Sulu, when performed by the Tausugs, were called biyula. The banay was a fan or a fly whisk with which the babaylan kept time. Drums were used in Tawi-Tawi and Isabela.

The tabo was the wheezing sound the diwata or spirit-god made when she spoke. In the north, it was called hitad and popoi in Lanao del Sur.

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The babaylan’s healing prowess was described in a most dramatic term, agaw meaning to carry off by force because a babaylan snatched away pain from the sufferer as she performed the paganito.

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Vocabularies were fashioned for men to understand what women said. Yes, women were the forces to be reckoned with.