What was death, dying like before?
Do you have any rituals, beliefs and practices that you and your family hold during a death of a loved one? Do you believe in life after death?
Just in time for the celebration of All Souls’ Day and All Saints’ Day, Casa Gorordo Museum (CGM) held a talk entitled “Panaw: Pre-colonial Visayan Beliefs on Death and the Afterlife” last Friday, Oct. 26 at the CGM.
The featured speaker was master storyteller Jose Eleazar Bersales, a professor of anthropology, author and cultural worker.
Bersales, whose talk was informed by years of archaeological field work and historical research, tackled the native religions of the Visayans in relation to death and the afterlife.
Bersales said the Visayans used to worship “diwatas” and idols in forms such as stone, images, wood or gold. These idols represented gods and male and female ancestors.
In pre-colonial times, the natives had small bamboo “outhouses” where sacrifices known as “ibid” were offered.
Bersales said one common ritual of the Visayans in pre-colonial times was the offering of meat to heal the sick.
Another one was the Pagtigman, the most prominent ritual, where villagers gathered in one place and butchered many wild pigs and offered them to the gods in exchange for a good and bountiful harvest.
Bersales also discussed the various mortuary beliefs of the Visayans.
“Loarca” was a belief in many parts of Cebu, Bohol and Bantayan that said that when someone died, they would go directly to the “infernal regions.”
In the presentation of Bersales, he shared that those who died by drowning in the sea were believed to remain underwater forever. In memory of these people, relatives placed a bamboo or reed and dressed it up as a man or woman to represent the person who died, and they erected it near the spot where the person drowned.
During the pre-colonial period, “professional mourners” were already present. They were hired by wealthy families, and they were paid to compose rhymes and dirges specific to the dead person.
When a village chief died, the whole village would come into silence, requiring everyone to refrain from shouting or making loud noises.
The dead was wrapped in cloth, the color of which depended on the social status of the person.
A poor man’s coffin was made of bamboo and woven vines.
Bersales said when someone died, the village held a feast, the scale of which depended on the social status of the deceased.
But where did we adopt all of these practices?
“Burial practices or all human practices are permitted by necessity, utilitarian functional necessity,” said Bersales.
“It doesn’t mean that the Egyptians came here or the Greeks came here and taught us to do these. They are forced by the circumstance of our geography and geology to create a culture we have,” Bersales added.
The event was attended by students from the different universities in Cebu, media and invited guests.