TWO months after getting her job promotion, my wife started having reddish, itchy spots all over her body. Doctors prescribed pills and various ointments to lessen her suffering. She would tell me the cures gave her respite for a few hours each day before the
cycle of itch and pain began again.

Once, thinking her disease might be incurable, she asked me to drive all the way to Pangasinan to see an albularyo or herbalist. When the village doctor saw the blisters on her arms, the old man turned to a small pan with boiling water, dropped some leaves into the pan and looked intently at the way the leaves aligned in the steaming water.

“Kulam yan!” he announced. “May naiinggit sa ‘yo!”

Kulam is the local term for hex (as opposed to curse or sumpa) from a witch or mangkukulam. It’s the all-encompassing explanation for ailments that modern medicine cannot adequately cure, much less account for. It’s also a term of damnation by the educated elite to the capacity of unlearned healers to heal the sick. Kulam, as entertainment fare, can be found in both local horror films and imported adventure fantasies such as the Harry Potter trilogy.

‘Kulam’ in Western lore

As a type of black magic or sorcery, witchcraft exists in many societies but the phenomenon has special significance in Western European history. European witchcraft was unique because it combined the idea of harmful sorcery with that of serving Satan or the Devil himself. Jean Brodin, a writer in 16th century France, defined a witch as “someone who knowingly brings about some act through diabolical means.”

In those early times, witchcraft became associated with many popular beliefs and superstitions. Supposed witches were accused of causing lingering illnesses or death to humans and domestic animals, and conjuring hailstorms to destroy crops. They reputedly met together at gatherings called Sabbats, where they parodied Christian rituals, did obscene homage to the devil and held deviant orgies. Because of their pact with Satan, witches were believed to have special a mark or scar on their bodies and they never bled or hurt when pricked by a sharp instrument.

The European doctrine of witchcraft was formulated during the late Middle Ages. The punishment of supposed witches did not become common until the 15th century. The first major witch-hunt occurred in Switzerland in 1427and the first important book on the subject, the Hammer of the Goddess, appeared in Germany in 1486. The persecution of witches reached its height between 1580 and 1660 when witch trials became rampant throughout Western Europe.

The center of witch-hunting lay in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. No one knows the number of victims but in Southwestern Germany alone, more than 3,000 witches were executed between 1560 and 1580. Witch trials declined after 1680. In England, the death penalty for witchcraft was abolished in 1786.

Why women were accused of being witches?

Witchcraft crossed over to America with the European colonists. In the Spanish and French territories, church courts assumed jurisdiction over cases of witchcraft and no deaths were reported in their charge. In the English colonies, about 40 people were executed for witchcraft between 1650 and 1710, half of them in the famous Salem witch trials of 1692.

The majority of accused witches were women. Old school theology presumed that women were weaker than men and more likely susceptible to the temptations of the devil. It was also assumed that, with few legal rights, women were more inclined to resort to sorcery than the law.

Beginning in the 1920s, witchcraft was revived as a fad among middle class or occult groups in Europe and America. The phenomenon was partly inspired by such books as Margaret Murray’s The Witch Cult in Western Europe which interpreted witchcraft as a kind of pre-Christian fertility cult originating from ancient Egypt. More recently, witchcraft has been influenced by the idea that witches’ trances and Sabbats were caused by hallucinogenic drugs. “Witch-hunt” also entered the English language to describe a political campaign intended to investigate subversive activities.

A witch is often represented as a monstrous-looking old woman with crooked nose attired in black, wearing a pointed hat, astride a flying broomstick. This image is a staple of Halloween traditions. In the contemporary revival of witchcraft, known as neo-pagan renaissance, its practitioners identify themselves as benign witches. Their more enlightened practice shuns association with evil and does not involve inflicting any harm or with diabolism, the incantation of the Devil. A fairly recent reference is the TV Charmed where three be-witching babes use their powers or concoct potions to battle magic-wielding baddies.

Witchcraft in the Philippines is a variant of the European strain. During the 16th century, in the course of converting the newly-discovered Filipinas islands to Christianity, Spanish friars encountered resistance from “heathen” villages under the “spell” of a babaylan or priest/priestess. Our ancestors practiced animism, which was anchored on the belief that their world was inhabited by both good and bad supernatural spirits. This indigenous conviction ran counter to the Christian faith being propagated by the friars resulting in the slow conversion of the islands to Christianity.

At the same time, the acts of the babaylan matched most of the European criteria for identifying witches. Among the supposed telltale signs of witchcraft were the capacity to influence another person, conjuring the dead, casting spells, falling into a trance and using superstitions to heal the sick. The friars convinced the villagers that the powers of the babaylan came from the devil and successfully branded the local priestess with the stigma of diabolical connection. The practice of indigenous worship retreated to the hinterlands as the conquering machinery of he Christian Church went into high gear on the heels apparently of a smear campaign against the homegrown faith.

When the topic of witchcraft turns up in inuman and lamayan, the island of Siquijor in Central Visayas invariably comes up. In fact, during Holy Week, Siquijor celebrates a Witches Festival. The event is highlighted by the Tangalag or potion-making ritual where live insects and various herbs are thrown into a cauldron filled with boiling water while the participants gather in a circle chanting incantations. They then dip flasks into the cauldron to get their share of the “potion” that is supposed to make the potions they concoct more effective. They proceed to exchange herbs and paraphernalia needed in their casting of magic and faith healing.

Types of spells

The typical image of a witch at work is one in which the mangkukulam recites a spell and pierces the part of a voodoo doll where the witch wants to inflict pain and suffering on the person represented by the voodoo doll. The solution is to find out who the mangkukulam is and bribe him or her to stop the kulam.

A witch can actually perform two types of spells. Kulam is the kinder, gentler variety. Barang is the dreaded, harmful variant in which the help of a shaman is usually sought to draw out the evil perpetrator and ease the suffering of an unsuspecting victim. There is this widely told story of a barang victim who initially complained of high fever and stomach ache but doctors failed to find anything wrong with him. When the village shaman/faith healer dealt with the problem, witnesses reported that the ailing man vomited cockroaches first before the fever subsided and the pain went away. He was a healed man after the gory exorcism session.

Tall story? Superstitious legend? Who knows; despite the march of technology and the increasing sophistication of the population, there are still events and illnesses that make sense in the old-school, Nature-based way. Maybe, the good witches and their fine brew (forget about barang!) still have a place in the progressive scheme of things. It’s the way, perhaps, of a Greater Being in reminding us to remain glued to the ground, our inner selves, even as we reach for the stars.