Let me introduce to you my tatay’s side of the family home province in Sta. Cruz, Occidental Mindoro.

Oh beloved Mindoro I miss you. Hell beloved Philippines I miss you.

First 3 pictures were taken by my cousins (that’s two of them right there) who went up in the hills by the main family house where my lola, the head of the family, lives. Everyone lives right close by and everyone spends their days around the main house even some of the neighbors kids who often play with one of these game machines my lola has in front of the house.

The last 4 pictures were taken by my tatay who went back home last August when my lolo died and him and my Tita Babes went back for the funeral and wake.

The beach you see is the beach we live right next to. Take a stroll down the street and you hit the beach. It’s not as pretty as it was years ago though according to my tatay because he said when he was younger there were a lot more tree’s and plants back then but people have been cutting them down.

The nipa huts you see is yes how my family and neighbors lives, some though are made out of stone but those houses are further away from the beach. The main house though is an adobe house mainly though because of the support my tatay has given to my family back home to help build it. There are only a few others like my family’s main house but others in my family and family friends live in traditional nipa huts.

Then take a drive or bike outside town you will see the hills and mountains and the rice fields.

*sigh*

Someone take me home.

Because they not only shaped out who are ancestors were and how they saw and explained the world, but they also talk about the genealogies of the people and how they are literally the children of the first deities themselves.

For example the Visayan creation myth. Now the myth slightly varies depending on the two Visayan groups the early Spaniards noted like Miguel de Loarca, who noted that there were two separate groups who all referred themselves as Bisaya. They were the people living along the coasts and those in the mountains and within those two groups there was even a couple of subdivisions you can say of each group.

In Loarca’s writings, he wrote down the creation myths that were told to him by the Visayans and how there was a separate but very similar myth between the Visayans living in the mountains and those along the coasts. The people in the coasts, the Yligueynes, have a creation story where there was originally only two deities, Kaptan and Magwayen, and where they came from no one knows. They married and from a reed that was planted by Kaptan came forth the first man and woman, Sikalak and Sikabay. They both married and had 2 children, Sibo the first son, and Samar, the daughter. They also both married and had a daughter name Lupluban, who Loarca says later on in the same manuscript regarding laws on mourning, war, weaving, etc. that their laws were given to the people by Lupluban herself and her son. Then Lupluban married her uncle, Pandaguan, the third and youngest child and second son of Sikalak and Sikabay. They had a son name Anoranor (who is the son I just mentioned that also gave the laws to the people) who also had a son name Panas, with a woman who Loarca didn’t mention the name of at this point. However Panas was said to be the first person who waged war and used weapons (which of course would be explained as the Visayans were described by many as a “warrior like race”) when he waged war on Mangaran because of an inheritance (there isn’t a mention of the relation of Mangaran and who his parents as far as I know of but I’m assuming he was Panas brother or cousin in regards to inheritance). With Pandaguan you get the explanation why people die and don’t come back and with Lupluban you also get the reason for concubinage and thievery.

Which is really interesting because you have this whole genealogy of the first ancestors of the coastal Visayans and explanations of why and how things happened.

And I typed in Filipinas to see, hoping, documents and manuscripts of the Philippines from the very early days of colonization from the 1500’s to the 1700’s (as the 1700’s people still had some traces of our precolonial cultures, beliefs, and practices).

And omg there are so many.

I can’t.

*grabby hands*

Mhm. Ya. Ok I think I’ll eventually start an online project with volunteers who want to help translate and write in HTML/Text format of the manuscripts.

And one I mean online project I mean making a website with a whole database and collection on manuscripts and texts on the Philippines.

Maybe get volunteers who can submit pictures of artifcacts from musuems like the Golden Tara in Chicago or the gold artifacts in Ayala.

Basically to put it simply an online library on texts and images concerning the Philippines and Filipin@’s.

Actually I would love it if there was an online library for Southeast Asia in general but thats an even bigger project so I’ll stick with the Philippines for now and let that big idea of an online library for Southeast Asia float in my mind and dreams for now.

ligayas-dream:

So I attended the Sakura Matsuri Festival at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden by Prospect Park this past Sunday with my mom and brothers and a few of our family friends. We were actually supposed to go to the Queens Botanical Garden in Flushing but I remembered it was the last day of the Sakura Matsuri thanks to a friend of mine who wrote a status on their Facebook and then suggested instead of going to the one in Queens we should just go to the one in Brooklyn because I know my brothers and the other kids would like to attend that one more.

It was our first year going so I honestly didn’t know what to expect. It wasn’t bad though I did get lost for about an hour and my phone service was down most of the time. Add the fact my battery was draining and at 10% was meh. Thankfully I finally had service for a good few minutes when my phone was at 8% and I managed to call my mom to ask where everyone else was because when I get lost, I get lost haha.

On the stage they did some traditional dances throughout the day and performances for the kids. It kind of makes me want the Filipin@ festivals that come around in the summer to come by already.

While I was lost and wandering around I decided to watch more of the performances and saw this performance involving the samurai and swordsmanship. These girls in front of me were like, oh that wasn’t what I was expecting at all I thought it would be like in movies. Well one they aren’t really fighting it’s a skit, a little performance meant for the kids so don’t expect actually fighting. Then there were these two white guys behind me who wouldn’t shut up going on and on about how this isn’t how it’s done and going sarcastically, “ohhh the greatest Japanese swordsman”, and basically making fun of the men up there performing for a group of kids. Kids. Like I said it’s not a demonstration it’s a performance and a cute story act for the kids. Shut up and stop acting like you are better than them when it’s their cultural event. *sigh*

Moving along I eventually found my mom and the others and we started to walk around the gardens and take pictures under the sakura tree’s. I actually didn’t see a lot of cosplayers, though I did see some people as the Sailor Scouts and the Avengers but they were in one of those cart thingies ( I honestly don’t know what they are called but it’s the little bus things that you see driving around zoo’s and places like that. ) I did see a lot of people dressed up in their lolita clothes making me wish I dressed up in one of my dresses but considering I had barely any time to get ready that morning I just grabbed whatever, put my hair up, and left. There were cosplayers but I saw them from passing but none was cosplaying any character that I really, really like.

Along our walk there was this one group where they cosplayed as Brock and Ash and my brother who is obsessed with Pokemon grabbed my arm and was like, “COME WITH ME.” The minute I saw the Pikachu’s on the ground I cracked up especially when he randomly went up to them and asked to hug them. Hahaha.

After that he was to happy he started playing the nyan cat song and skipping around. Now imagine a kid with a Pikachu bag blasting out the nyan cat song from his little speakers skipping around. It’s a sight haha. This guy behind us who was with a girl then said “aww I wish I knew him so we can chill.” My brother didn’t hear him but we told him what the guy said and told him imagine if you go back and skip around them and come back. Of course my brother being the person he is does just that and goes back down the path we walked on and finds the guy and girl and starts skipping around them with the nyan cat song on grinning like the chesire cat before skipping back up the path. xD

After that we continued taking pictures with the flowers and left where the festival was. I should have taken more pictures and there was plenty of more areas to go to but everyone else wanted to go so sadly I couldn’t take as much.

Sadly I missed the cosplay show on stage later that day because we left but next year we plan to come again so definitely I’ll take more pictures besides of just us.

We are currently at 17 deities and counting! (Minus Magayon who is the only fictional deity and 4 others who are based on a modern addition of the Visayn creation story or is a deity that was influenced from the Sto. Nino)

I mean there are some inaccuracies such as Lalahon for example who is just so very, very, very, wrongly depicted because she isn’t even a fire and volcano Goddess or has anything to do with it other than her abode being Mt. Kanlaon that bears her name, but she was a supreme goddess associated with harvest whose other name is Laon (so basically in the show they both have Lalahon and Laon who they depict as two separate deities but are actually the same). Then there is the Santonilyo which is obviously a deity influenced from the Sto. Nino (baby Jesus), and isn’t an indigenous deity. Also the fact Lidagat and Lihangin aren’t actual deities that were worshiped as there are no mentions of them in historical records. Their names first popped up in John Maurice Miller’s 1904 Philippine Folklore Stories through his own addition of the Visayan creation story that was recorded by those of Alcina and Loarca that was told to them by the people particularly the older generations who still had their indigenous knowledge. In his story he adds a “rebellion” of the children of the deities Kaptan and Magwayen, who are reported in accounts of the Visayan creation story, based on the Spanish records of the creation story being a marriage between the sea and land breeze (which in some accounts it was Kaptan and Magwayen). So in this case those two shouldn’t exist along with Liadlaw.

The others are pretty much portrayed more or less accurate enough,with the exception of Magayon, who is already stated to be the only deity the producers created themselves just for the purpose of the show.

However despite some of the inaccuracies in the show regarding the old Visayan deities I actually applaud them for doing all this because being someone who has been Pagan since I was 11 and eventually becoming a Polytheistic Reconstructionist for 2 1/2 years now based on the indigenous beliefs of the Philippines in particular of the Visayas and Tagalog regions, seeing the deities I actually work with and pay my respects to being brought to life makes me smile. The way it also has shown to Filipin@’s that we have our own pantheons, and its not just the Visayans as the Tagalogs, Ilocanos, and Kapampangans for example have their own as well, that we can be proud of. We have all grown up learning and most likely being fascinated by other mythologies and pantheons such as the Greek, Egyptian, Norse, Roman, Celtic, Japanese, etc. but majority of us don’t, or didn’t considering shows like Amaya and Indio that has brought our mythologies to light, know that we even had our very own.

Looking at my tracker on the Pinoy-Culture blog and of phrases and keywords the people search up in search engine sites like Google and Bing I see a lot of people have found the blog by searching up those certain deities like Magwayen or Pandaki for example. I have seen people just within a day look up “animist in Philippines” or things like “precolonial religion Philippines”. Which again makes me smile because people are becoming interested in our mythologies and pantheons which to me is awesome.

Though I will admit that along with the inaccuracies especially with Lalahon/Laon, there are other things that I don’t particularly like in how they portray the deities but *shrug*, I can’t really complain really because this is the first like this where they are actually bringing our old deities to light and into the knowledge of the public through a primetime tv series.

adrenialove:

Horseshoe crabs everywhere!

I see the shells from molts and some recently dead ones that often wash ashore on Jones Beach every time I come here and walk around especially in early summer in June when they often are seen as its the time when they start breeding. These pictures were actually taken last summer (yes during the time where I just completely neglected this blog I know but I’m back!) while I went walking around the shallow and marsh areas like the area pictured above and everywhere I walked along that area there was a horseshoe crab either in the sand, grass, or just underneath the water close to shore as the tide kept on rising throughout the day.. I took pictures of at least 10 different ones with one my brothers picked up so they can look at it more closely as it was there first time seeing them.

I think for those of us who live along the coasts especially around the Long Island Sound, Connecticut, and New Jersey and other areas where they are seen frequently, horseshoe crabs represents an image of our childhood.

I actually can’t wait until summer comes again this year so I can go take more pictures of these living fossils.

From my personal blog where I actually blog instead of this blog where I post random stuff and most are just reblogs.

I mentioned in a post here awhile ago that I’ll be bringing my old blog from the grave since I last blogged in June of last year and actually start blogging again mainly for myself, friends, and family where we can look back at things that have happened in the past.

Also like I said on that post, I just simply miss blogging.

Can we just skip this April then the rest of the year and let it be 2014 already?

Because the plan is set.

I’m going back to the Philippines with just my mom and possibly my best friend if she doesn’t have work to do in South Korea. And it’s just me and my mom while my tatay and brothers stay home. My mom doesn’t care if my tatay comes but if he does she’s not staying with him because last time we all went to the Philippines we only stayed with my tatay’s side of the family in Mindoro and my tatay doesn’t want to go to Panay (and the rest of the Visaya’s) where my mom’s side of the family is from for some odd reason.

But ya I’ll be heading back to the homeland for about a month after 7 years. 7 damn long years.

This time I’ll be in Aklan, Kalibo, Panay visiting my moms side who my mom hasn’t seen in years since I was a baby and then we will be going to other parts of the Visaya’s for vacation.

Along our trip we might also go to either Japan or Hong Kong because she wants to go there and we have family in both so we have a place to stay. That or Singapore. I’ll probably also head out and stay abroad a bit longer and visit my best friend in South Korea and she will be my tour guide like I will be if she comes to the Philippines with us. We’ve both been planning on saving up to go to a trip around North and South East Asia for awhile now so I think next year is the perfect time though we probably won’t be able to go everywhere but still.

But hell I’m just excited to go back home next year. And it’s definite this time (we were supposedly suppose to go this April but stuff happened last year and we still weren’t sure if we were going to go) because my mom already booked her vacation for that whole month a whole year in advance.

So yea.

2014 come already please.

I’m already starting to count down the next 12 long months.

A lot of those Spanish records in the archives are still not researched and evalualated unlike famous ones like records by Morga, Loarca, Legazpi, Pigafetta, Plasencia, Salazar, Chirino, and Alcina. Most of those are also documents that have been translated into English during the U.S. colonial era from the original Spanish written documents and despite being secondary sources where occasionaly there are mistranslations from the original Spanish to English text many Filipin@ historians choose to read from those English documents than the Spanish.

Here is what many people don’t know. Yes a lot of information was lost during World War II. However many are still here, in the archives in the Philippines as well as Spain. Despite colonization under Spain they are not “evil” as how the U.S. tried to make Spain as in the minds of Filipin@’s during the U.S. colonial period.

Yes we were colonized by Spain. Yes there was a lot of injustices toward us by Spain. However Spain kept and wrote many records of the people and islands. Our history is in those records. Our history is in Spanish. Unless we find more documents like the Laguna Copperplate that were written by us prior or during the Spanish rule, our primary sources whether we like it or not are in Spanish and written by them. Most of what we know of our past is by going through those documents.

Now like I mentioned above, the sad thing is that many historians for some reason or another don’t want to look into and read those Spanish documents, they would rather read them through the eyes and filters of American historians. They would rather read the English translations of the Spanish records, the few that have been translated and looked at, and get our history from them rather the primary sources themselves. (As you can see in the case of Indio and Amaya with some things you can see in both series where the historians used refrences from the Blair and Robertson English translations of several documents, instead of the actual Spanish sources)

In the Philippines National Archives there are still a whole lot of records, maps, and documents that have yet to be looked at. Again there are at least 13 million documents in the archives. 13 million. And that’s just documents during the more than 300 years of Spanish colonial rule. There is plenty of more afterwards but since I am more focused during the pre-colonial and early days of the Spanish colonial period toward from the late 1500’s to 1800’s I’m focusing on that time period of history.

As someone who is this close to wanting to become a historian herself, it would be a privilege to read, go through, and study those documents and primary sources and bring them to light. It’s probably the only reason I actually want to learn Spanish now just for that purpose because again whether we like it or not our primary sources of history is written in Spanish, not English or any of the languages in the Philippines minus maybe a few.

And I just stopped half way through several paragraphs because honestly I’m just not in the right mood to get into that whole debate.

All I will say is though all these confusing labels that has pretty much messed us up identity wise?

Invented by colonialism. That is all.

Did you know the Philippines was all labeled as either a part of Polynesia, Oceania, Pacific Islands, then Southeast Asia at one point during the events of over almost 400 years of colonialism? And y’all wonder why we have so many “identities”.

And if a white person or another Asian person who is not Filipin@, or hell anyone who just isn’t Filipin@ tells you, that you are using the wrong terminology to label and identify yourself as, whether it be, no you aren’t Asian you are Pacific Islander, or no you are Hispanic, I say fuck every one of them.

The only people who have the right to identify you is you. The only people who have the right to identify us is us.

I identify as Filipin@-American of Tagalog and Akeanon ethnicity. I identify as being Southeast Asian. I identify as being Austronesian.

That is it.

I don’t identify as Hispanic. I don’t identify as a Pacific Islander. I don’t identify as Malay.

And don’t tell me how I or any one of my people on how to identify ourselves “correctly” and that we are fuckin wrong.

Currently making GIF’s! ~

I’m finding my new hobby right now haha. But ya, sneak preview on what I’ll be posting this week. For those who have followed me and Pinoy-Culture for a long time now you should know what series this is.

But if you don’t here is the post on it.

I’m having so much fun doing these my god someone help.

My altar. I still need to get my hands on some banana leaves but it’s pretty much done.

And I will be cutting and working on those coconuts tomorrow yes.

A video will be up soon and I did say on there I would make a post on here with more details on certain things but I don’t think I really need to explain anything? That and I’m kinda lazy to write because I’m a sloth.

Anyway Happy Equinox! Whether you are celebrating the Spring Equinox or Fall Equinox, hope you all had a good one.

Except I’m on the other side of the world. *cries*

THE BOOKS. ALL THE FUCKIN BOOKS. ON HISTORY, LANGUAGE, ART, OLD PHOTO’S, EARLY DOCUMENTS, AND FUCK.

SOMEONE GET ME A PLANE AND TAKE ME TO THE PHILIPPINES PLEASE.

I would literally sit there and read for hours upon hours, taking notes, scanning any important pages with info, and then writing posts upon posts on Pinoy-Culture on everything.

Seriously. This should just be my job. Blogging, researching, and writing books about our history (both pre-colonial and colonial), cultures, languages, mythology, artifacts, and pretty much what I do on Pinoy-Culture anyway.

Watch me.

And I look at him and go why did you say that?

He goes. Because Laon is our Goddess Ate!

Ok. Indio. Amaya. Both those shows are doing such a good job yes.

I can’t help but smile when its not Greek deities he’s interested in. Not Egyptian. Not Norse. Ya know, the big 3 that at one point or another you learn in school, especialy the Greek. Nope.

It’s Filipin@ deities.

Ones his ancestors praised. Good. *nods head*

Now I’m not expecting him to start actually worshiping them or anything but the fact he’s interested (hell a lot more people are now especially with Amaya finished and Indio currently airing and showing many different deities in the series) in mythology from the Philippines makes me smile.

The new Samsung Galaxy S4 is coming out within the next few weeks with its launching event next week in NYC, just around the perfect time where my two year contract ends so…yes I’ll be patient, save my money, and get that. *nods head*

For those of you who missed my post this morning, I am currently reorganizing and cleaning my altar and ancestor shrine after neglecting its maintenance since December.

So that is two things off my list. I still need the rice wine, bamboo, tuba or lambanog, the 7 picture frames, and the fruits and rice cakes for my offerings.

And after I’m going to start shopping for seeds to this years backyard.

Yup. Expect lots of things involving my spirituality and path this upcoming Spring and Summer. :)