Abstract

The study explores voice as a paradigm of culturally-appropriated hierophanies, with its binary, the “voiceless” referring to silent manifestations employing visual and other experiential modes of communication. I posit that this is a common theme in the various religious phenomena in the Catholic cult of saints in the Philippines. Proceeding by way of exemplarity, the study devolves from a comparison of two most popular religious icons, that is, Nuestra Señora de Peñafrancia in the Bicol Region, and Our Lady of Manaoag in Manaoag, Pangasinan. The former attracts thousands of devotees in an annual fluvial procession in the Bicol River, where the sacred image has been fished out of, according to local religious myth. Our Lady of Manaoag gathers a daily influx of pilgrims from all over the country throughout the year. The shrine on top of a hill is the site where, according to local lore, the image appeared and called (manaoag), facilitating the natives’ conversion to the Catholicism. I argue that both revelatory models are found in the narratives of the sacred as Santong Boses (sacred voice), in the religious tradition surrounding Mount Banahaw in the Southern Tagalog region, which was a center of native resistance that eventually led to the Philippine Revolution of 1898, thereby highlighting a pre-colonial mediation in the present, and for the future. Throughout, the study explores voice as contested power, and as universal paradigm in God talk: as startling starts, and at the start/incipience of religion as a startling experience.

Presenters

Hermel Pama
Senior Lecturer III, Anthropology (UPD); Faculty of Philosophy, UST Graduate School (UST), University of Santo Tomas and University of the Philippines Diliman, Jawa Timur, Indonesia

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Religious Foundations

KEYWORDS

Voice, Experience, Language, Devotions

Digital Media

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