Chris At Home

Here is a quick list of some Filipino superstitions. They are interesting to me because they are very non-linear; it is hard to figure out the reason why these beliefs exist and how they came to be. Remember, these are taken very seriously so don't try to dissuade a Filipino from their beliefs.

• If you cut yourself on Good Friday, the cut will take months to heal.
• If you have sex on Good Friday, you will never be able to extract your penis, remaining joined until you die.
• If you bbq or fry food on Good Friday, you will get black freckles on your face.
• Don't go to a baptism when pregnant or the two kids will be enemies.
• Don't clip fingernails at night or you will have a fight with your parents.
• Don't bathe when you are menstrating or your ovaries will be damaged by the water.
• If you are a virgin, don't sing while cooking or you will marry an old man.
• If you eat bananas when pregnant, you will have twins.
• If your baby is always sick, you must change his name.
• If you see a monkey when pregnant, your child will be wild. Seeing or hearing about any animal will make your child resemble that animal.
• If you dream of losing your teeth, a family member will die.
• Don't sweep the house at night or you sweep away the blessings.
• If someone leave the dinner table, turn your plate around or you will not have food soon.
• Say a special phrase "Porya Gaba" when throwing away discarded rice or you will lose all your money and never have rice again.
• Sighing while eating causes your spirit to starve. The solution is to force the person to eat a great deal of food immediately.
• Don't kill ants in your house. They are a sign of a happy family.
• All houses and vehicles must be blessed by a priest or they will be destroyed by the devil.
• Pink eye can be cured with breast milk or with the first urine in the morning.
• Virgins do get pregnant from swimming pools and public baths.
• During a girl's first menstruation, she must be careful not to step in animal waste, or her mense blood will always smell awful. During the first menstruation, a girl should rub tomato on her face to ensure she always has soft skin. Blood from the first menstruation cures pimples if rubbed on one's face.
• Birth control pills and semen build up inside the vagina, requiring periodic cleaning by a doctor. (More: Birth control pills cause cancer. Birth control pills taken before a first pregnancy make you infertile. Birth control pills make you fat. Birth control pills make your breasts grow. All filipinas are allergic to condoms.)

In my wife's village, there has been a cluster of deaths due to stomach cancer. It is unanimously believed that the deaths are caused by witches. The villagers claim that the doctors say that there is nothing wrong with the victim (this could be because treatment is not available for the price the villagers can pay, resulting in reluctance to treat the victim.)

Entire islands and provinces are considered to be infested with witches and unsafe for travel. Siquihor, near Dumaguete, is the most famous and feared.I visited the island as a tourist and never saw anything different about the island, except more t-shirt vendors than normal.

The Philippines is the home of psychic surgery, possibly the cruelest scam known to man.

If you want to ensure that your Filipino friends will never go outside at night, tell them you saw a white lady walking through the trees. White ladies are malicious ghosts. If you want to kill business at a hotel, tell your friends that someone died there but you are not sure which room. They will not take the chance that their room contains a ghost. Or tell them you saw something with a long tongue and red eyes in the trees; aswangs are blood-drinking monsters with long tongues.

Each village also has some unique places that are thought to be unsafe. Perhaps an aswang or white lady was spotted there, or perhaps someone died there and it is not lucky.