When you take a bus trip from
Negros to Boracay, chances are your going to pass the town of Cadiz. I remember
when we passed this town from a trip to Boracay, the bus made a scheduled stop
from a gas station in Cadiz City so passengers can have taken a leak since it
still too far before we can reach the town of Caticlan. As we stop at the gas
station, some vendors approached the bus and started to sell us some food. The
bus conductor told us not to buy any food being sold by street vendors. He even
closed the windows.
I asked the conductor for his
reasons. He said that most vendors are not human but “aswang” in disguised and
the food were human viscera. If we eat those food we will become aswang like
them.
No one really knows when it all
started but the province of Cadiz becomes well known, not because of its food
or handicrafts like other Philippine provinces. Cadiz turns out to be famous
because of the aswang...The Philippine Boogey man!
Just like Siquijor, the
Philippine town which is famous for witchcraft, Cadiz was the center of the
folklore of the “aswang”. The aswang is a night creature who is known to eat
human guts. It sometimes took the appearance of a large black pig or large
black dogs. The power they possessed is called lycanthropy – The magical
ability of a creature to assume the characteristics of an animal, like a wolf.
Unlike werewolves, you will not become an aswang after being bitten by one. They
say those aswangs were passed from generations to generations. If your parents
are aswangs, by the age of sixteen they will pass this powers to you, in a form
of a black chick. You have to swallow this chick and you will become an aswang.
Another way of becoming an aswang is when you accidentally ate their food. Old
folks say that an aswang food is camouflage as ordinary food and they will
gladly offer it to you. Sometimes they say that restaurants and food stalls in
Cadiz serve these food to guests and you will never even know that you are
already eating human innards.
In order for a person to
distinguish an aswang food, he must squeeze some lime or kalamansi juice on the
dish. It is said that if you place lime juice in an aswang food, the disguise
will melt away to reveal its true form.
The whole tales about the aswangs
were really folklore, yet it’s giving the province of Cadiz economic troubles.
It’s very hard to open an eatery store in Cadiz or to sell food on passing
visitors from other towns. People always assume that those foods were tinted.
Abandoned old folks seem to have more difficulties because most are stereotyped
as aswangs. I sometimes blame the media for blowing more air to the fire.Cheap
horror shows here in the Philippines hire old performers to play the part of
the aswang. So instead of helping them and providing them with their, people
seem to avoid old folks living in the remote parts of the province.
The superstition has created
unjustified trepidation from the local people. Maybe Filipinos are too
gullible. The United States even used this to their benefit. When the
Philippines were still under US rule in the early part of 20th century, the
Americans used the beliefs of the aswang to flush out insurgents hiding in the
mountains. They place two cadavers in the mountains side with peculiar holes in
their neck. Then they spread a rumor to the town folks about an aswang roaming
around the mountainous region. The plan worked well. Within a month or so
insurgents came rushing down in fright and eagerly surrendered to the American
forces.
It’s so easy to accept gossips
and urban legends, and people seem to bite such stories even without doing a
little investigation about it. That’s why the bus conductor considers it even
without reflecting of the results it will create to those honest street
merchants. Because of that absurd belief about the aswang, those street
peddlers will not bring in anything to provide for their families.
Superstition is described as an
irrational belief arising from ignorance or fear. Some justify superstition as
part of customs and traditions. I do not even know of any culture in this world
that does not have any form of superstition.
Here in the Philippines, we have
different superstitions from the time of our birth till we get married until we
die. I think it’s quite natural for religious people. Superstitions prosper
because of fear factor. They believe that when you ignored superstition. Say
you ignore a black cat crossing the street; you will be having many dreadful misfortunes.
So people will be compelled to believe it, because of the foreboding of bad
lucks, while other says that there is nothing to lose if you believe it. Well
you might say that these beliefs are harmless...Maybe?
Have you received a chain letter?
The chain letter works like a superstitious belief. You are told to copy the
letter 100 times and to send those entire letters to different people in the
span of a month. If you failed to comply you will die or your family will
suffer series of bad lucks. However, if you accomplished what the letter says,
you will gain a lot of blessings. So a typical sucker will believe this letter
and will produce 100 letters, consuming all his productive time, not to mention
pen ink (or electricity if he is using a computer), paper and stamps (Internet
time which of course is not without charge here in the Philippines). He will
send these bogus letters to 100 people gaining what? I bet he even lost his
self-respect because he was lead to believe by a spurious message because of
fear.
So is superstitious belief
harmless? Let’s take a look at the Filipino Fiesta tradition. Filipino travel
brochure promotes the tradition of Fiesta as a symbol of Filipino hospitality.
Yet the superstition behind the festive atmosphere of the Philippine Fiesta is
really disappointing. Our ancient ancestors believe in the powers of different
gods and goddesses. In every human activity, a deity always watches. There are
fertility goddesses, rain gods, war gods, rice goddesses, sea goddesses and so
on. When the Spaniards came and introduced their Christian god to the
Philippines, well those “pagan gods and goddesses” only transformed into what
we now known as “saints." The rice god becomes the patron saint of
agriculture. When a childless couple pray for a miracle, they go to Obando,
Bulacan to dance for Santa Clara...Something like our ancestors does for
Libugan - the Goddess of fertility.
The rule with fiesta is that you
have to serve up many food to guests to receive bountiful blessings. That means
you have to beg, steal or borrow just to push this tradition through. So after
the occasion, what then? You are up to your neck with debts you cannot pay,
much for bountiful blessings.
In what extent do these
superstitions will rule or ruin our lives?
Religion is the mother of all
superstitions, and nothing can be a best example of the irrationality of fear
promoted by superstition than religious doctrines and dogmas. For example,
members of Christian Science will reject all form of medical treatment in the
grounds that God alone will provide salvation from sickness. Jehovah’s
Witnesses will not accept blood transfusion even in emergency, life-threatening
cases.
Take a look at the issues
concerning the Witch Hunt. These hideous acts were justified by superstition.
In 1484 Pope Innocent VIII produced his Bull against Witches. Two years later
two infamous German monks, Heinrich Institoris Kramer and Jakob Sprenger,
produced their incredible concoction of anti-Witchery, the Malleus Maleficarum
(The Witch Hammer).
Gradually the hysteria kindled by
Kramer and Sprenger began to spread. It spread like a fire—flashing up suddenly
in unexpected places; spreading quickly across the whole of Europe. For nearly
three hundred years the fires of the persecutions raged. Humankind had gone
mad.
In 1586 the Archbishop of Treves
decided that the local Witches had caused the recent severe winter. By dint of
frequent torture a "confession" was obtained and one hundred twenty
men and women were burned to death on his charge that they had interfered with
the elements.
The following is a typical
scenario:
In 1595, an old woman residing in a village near Constance, angry at not being
invited to share the sports of the country people on a day of public rejoicing,
was heard to mutter something to herself, and was afterwards seen to proceed
through the fields towards a hill, where she was lost sight of. A violent
thunderstorm arose about two hours afterwards, which wet the dancers to the
skin, and did considerable damage to the plantation. This woman suspected
before of witchcraft, was seized and imprisoned, and accused of having raised
the storm, by filling a hole with wine, and stirring it about with a stick. She
was tortured till she confessed, and burned alive the next morning. – C.Mackay,
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. The End of Faith,
Sam Harris.
Here is an excerpt from an invaluable compilation, The Encyclopedia of
Witchcraft and Demonology, by Rossell Hope Robbins:
One might glance at some of the special tortures at Bamberg, for example, such
as the forcible feeding of the accused on herrings cooked in salt, followed by
denial of water— a sophisticated method which went side by side with immersion
of the accused in baths of scalding water to which lime had been added. Other
ways with witches included the wooden horse, various kinds of racks, the heated
iron chair, leg vises [Spanish boots], and large boots of leather or metal into
which (with the feet in them, of course) was poured boiling water or molten lead.
In the water torture, the question de I'eau, water was poured down the throat
of the accused, along with a soft cloth to cause choking. The cloth was pulled
out quickly so that the entrails would be torn. The thumbscrews [gresillons]
were a vise designed to compress the thumbs or the big toes to the root of the
nails, so that the crushing of the digit would cause excruciating pain.
A rough estimate of the total
number of people burned, hung or tortured to death on the charge of Witchcraft,
is nine million. The last execution for witchcraft in Holland, cradle of the
Enlightenment, was in 1610; in England, 1684; America, 1692; France, 1745;
Germany, 1775; and Poland, 1793. In Italy, the Inquisition was condemning
people to death until the end of the eighteenth century, and inquisitorial
torture was not abolished in the Catholic Church until 1816. The last bastion
of support for the reality of witchcraft and the necessity of punishment has
been the Christian churches.
The whole anti-Semitic belief in
Europe prior to World War 2 was kindled from superstition. Like witches, the Jews from
Eastern Europe were often accused of incredible crime. Christian believes that
the Jews are responsible to Jesus’ death. Because of this crime, they are just
being penalized. An added reason here is that Christians just cannot stand
hearing Jews as “God’s favorite people." Because of these beliefs brought
by the Bible stories, different superstitions were created by ignorant
Christians. The most known is the superstition surrounding the concept of
“blood libel."
Throughout the Middle Ages, Jews
were accused of murdering Christian infants. Christian believes that Jews need
the blood of an innocent Christian blood of a newly baptized child to replenish
their lost stores during menstruation. They also believe that Jews use the
blood to cure themselves from terrible hemorrhoids and oozing sores as a
punishment for murdering Jesus Christ on the cross.
Jewish babies were also believed
to have their fingers attached to their foreheads and only the blood of a
Christian baby can cure it.
It is out of this history of
theologically mandated persecution fire upped by the irrational superstitions
against the Jew, with the justification of the Christian Bible that secular
anti-Semitism emerged. The result: 6 million people lost their lives.
So when you believe that
superstitions are harmless...think again.
