WHAT literary critics call “magical realism” is known back home as the 6 o’clock news. Consider: A 13-year-old who chats with the Virgin Mary. A pregnant transvestite. A woman who gave birth to a fish. A child whose twin sister is a snake. A child whose father is an elf. The spirits of St. Francis, St. Joseph and the Holy Child Jesus inhabiting the bodies of men and women who can also make the lame walk and the blind see. Young women possessed by evil spirits. An old toothless man who can cure the sick with his saliva. Witchcraft and witchbusters who will de-hex you with a basin of water and candle wax.
At a pink church in Baguio, you can write down your wishes on a piece of paper. In Obando, Bulacan, parents hoping for their first child try to please God by dancing in the streets. At the Convento de Sta. Clara in Quezon City, devotees with “urgent” requests offer eggs to the saints. In Taal, Batangas, a statue of St. Michael once flew like a frenzied hummingbird to warn the people that the nearby volcano was about to erupt.
A “manananggal” is a winged woman who can detach her upper torso from the lower half of her body and whose favorite meal is a fetus marinating in the mother’s womb. A “kapre” is a bearded ogre who smokes huge cigars. A “tikbalang” is a gigantic half-man, half-horse creature. A “tiyanak” is a cherubic baby who turns into a monster that can chew your face like pugua imported from Taiwan.
And then there are the self-proclaimed messiahs who have been with us as early as the 18th century. They say they can converse with God, heal the sick and predict the future. Their followers wear amulets as “protection” against bullets, and they usually die of gunshot wounds.
One of these saviors recently landed on the front-pages of Manila’s newspapers after his disciples tried to prevent the police from arresting him. They were, of course, mowed down by automatic fire. The Divine Master, as this fellow was called, then surrendered. A former mayor of his hometown, he is an “ice” addict who plays lead guitar in a rock band and lives in a house on an island with a swimming pool shaped like an electric guitar. He is wanted by the police for the murder of one of his wives whose relatives were also massacred by his followers.
Asia’s only Roman Catholic nation is soaked in mysticism, and the willingness to believe in the unbelievable cuts through social classes. Like their maids and chauffeurs, the snootiest “coños” are certain that malignant spirits exist, that faith healers can indeed heal, and that strange looking individuals in poverty stricken provinces have supernatural “powers.” Amid deprivation and decay, these holy men and women promise divinity and deliverance, and therein lies their attraction. In a place where bad people thrive and the good and the innocent die terrible deaths, the all-too human yearning for things to make sense is more deeply felt. And what could be clearer than the vision offered by men like the Divine Master?
Faith in the occult, however, does not necessarily feed on poverty and ignorance. Otherwise, the novels of Tolkien and Rowling would not be as enduringly popular as they are in affluent nations, nor would there be cults like the People’s Temple and Heaven’s Gate in the U.S. We do not hunger for bread alone and as long as we expect something MORE than this earthly existence with its attendant horrors and inconveniences, God will exist and his self-appointed representatives––nutcases included––will continue to live among us.
