According to Malou Aguilar in her book “Carrying the Legacy of
Filipino Indigenous Knowledge (2009), the Babaylan is identified by her
community, recognizing her as someone who has the ability to mediate with the
spirit world, has her own spirit guides, and is given the gifts of healing,
foretelling and insights. She may also have knowledge of healing therapies suck
as hilot and or albularyo. She is also a ritualist, a chanter and or a diviner.
For Dr. Alicia Magos, an Ilonggo
Anthropologist, in her book “The Enduring Maaram Tradition: An Ethnography of a
Kinaray-a Village in Antique’ (1992), a babaylan is a religio-initiated person
who has undergone a deep intense religious experience. She is also a folk
therapist not only of the physical ailments but of the mental and emotional
stresses experienced by an individual.
A babaylan is a Filipino word that refers
specifically to an individual or a group of healers, mostly women, who were
acknowledged by friends and family as possessing extraordinary gifts. These may
be having a gift of vision, an ability to see through schemes and situations,
the gift for healing – a specific touch or intuited or passed-on knowledge to
specific processes of “fixing” and “putting” people and things together. The
first priority of all Babaylan (is) her community. This definition was given by
Carlos Villa, an artist and a teacher.
The ancient babaylans had four(4) special
roles in the ancient Philippine community: Warrior -takes a stand for not only survival
but also for change for the better, for fairness, justice and for balance and
harmony in the community; Teacher
- harvests knowledge and
heritage, processes nurtures and develops knowledge and heritage and then
plants seeds for future generations to harvest; Healer- removes dis-ease and
disease, brings about health and wholeness in the physical and emotional
well-being of the community and Visionary intuits and perceives truth and
understanding and shares this with family and/or community, from which action
is taken to move forward for development, success, harmony and peace. (http://www.fawn2005.com/pdfs/archetypes_leadership.pdf)
image source: http://people.tribe.net/medge/blog/1035a7b2-6336-420f-9d2d-e572bd74bd06
