Salazar
Salazar
Salazar
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE*
ZEUS A. SALAZAR
trails" which was cured only when the shaman or tawa looked
for the malevolent deity in order "to softly calm him with the
palm of his hand" (Vincendon-Dumoulin and Desgraz, 1843:
228). In the Philippines, the method was simply to extract the
object causing the disease or the aswang himself who. entered
the body of .the sick person. In: case it was an aswang which
was inside the body, the Bikols performed either the hidhid, by
which the batMan put an emplaster of buyo leaves ;on the head
of the patient and danced, or the haplos, which was a ritual
message, preceded by the invocation of Bathala and the execra-
tion of the aswang· (Castano, 1895).
· How do all these ancient techniques compare with those
used by our modern faith healers? Concerning the reintegration
of the soul, it would appear -that what is put back into the body
of thEt:patient is "energy" through ·~magnetic adjustment". In
the olden days, the reintegration of th~ soul into the body was
presented by making some kind. of insect caught by the kata-
lonan di~appear somewhere on the head of the patient. Or the
insect could .be blown. into the head through the puyo or cow-
lick. Today, what actually is "charged" into the body through
"magnetic adjustrii(mt" is not shown. It is something. that we
just have_.:to believe, a "magnetic :fluid" or ''bioplasm" which
somehow comes out of the healing hand of the medium and'
l*netrates the body of the patient like some mysticai electric
current. In some sects, such as the lri l{oc Signe Vince Church,
one could. get, aside from psychic energy through massage,
spiritual inject~on and blood transfusion. It would seem that
in this form ~he ancient kaluluwa or kr;tlag, has acquired philo-
sophical an_d scientific~eyen biological and medical~onsist
ency. The .kaluluwa has, therefore, remained a motor principle
of the human being, the mo,St impQrtant motive force in the
b(>dy's inner functioning.
The old art of extracting by massage the object thrown
into the ginhawaan by the as.wang still persists together with
the much rarer method of exorcising the aswang himself. This
is still practised by the lesser groups of. healers who, like the
experts Nu~ez wrote about at the turn of the century, could
still tie the toes and fingers. of the. patient "in an07la bark" or
even beat hiin till the mangkukulam leaves the body. But then
these healers operate in the . fringes of the profession. The
center be1ongs to those who have .modernized the. extraction
technique· through the kneading of the affected parts. Their
most' spectac"t.tlar achievement seems to be that they have come
to. be identified with surgery., as demonstrated by their capa-
38 ASIAN STUDIES
CONCLUSION
If we compare our present faith healers with their ancient
counterparts, the katalonans or babaylans, faith healing can
thus be viewed as just tlie latest avatar of the ancient Filipinos'
medico-religious system of beliefs and practices. This continuity
can be traced historically along an apparently continuous line
of filiation, either through 'survivals among our ethnic minorities
cir. through preservation in the lowland areas as a result of the
inability of the friars to -suppress native beliefs or the intensity
with which these were lived and revitalized in the succession
of rebe1I.ious ·and ·messianic :movements before and after the
Revolution. This .medic~religious liner however, constitutes just
one of the sources ~nd resources of Philippine psychology. We
have therefore placed it in perspective with three others, orui
native and two foreign. The line of ethnic psychology is pro-
bably the richest of all, the pooresLbeing .that of academic-
philosophical psychology. Both are however still virgin fields of
historical as well substantive research. The Western tradition
of academic-scientific psychology is probably the most well-
known, and, until recently, it was considered as the only valid
40 ASIAN STUDIES
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