Saturday, March 21, 2009

Sagada Mountain Province - All Souls' Day



Just an incredibly haunting photograph, found online, and whose source I am trying desperately to find. The people of the Sagada, instead of lighting candles to remember their dead on All Souls' Day, light small bonfires instead. First is the practical consideration-- one simply cannot expect wimpy candles to last long in the battering winds of the mountains. The more mystical side of this ritual centers on the belief that, the brighter the flame one lights, so too is the intensity of the deceased's suffering alleviated. It is especially interesting, too, since Sagada is not exactly a region where Catholicism is that entrenched-- the Anglican communion is stronger there, having been brought by American missionaries to the Philippines at the dawn of the twentieth century.

3 comments:

cyurkanin said...

WOW! What an image! I had NO IDEA that Anglicanism made any headway into the Philippines, and even if I came across one there I would have assumed it was a recent development, not from missionaries. Very interesting.

Archistrategos said...

I was quite surprised, too. A friend who attended a work camp in Sagada almost three years ago told me that Catholicism was actually the new development there, since the Spanish were more concerned with the larger Catholic population in the cascos. It's quite interesting, though, that the folk piety of the Igorots has more in common with Catholic practices than Anglican ones.

christopher said...

I didn't even know where this place was so I looked up info on it. Fascinating! The burial caves and the hanging coffins are unreal...