When One’s Birthday Opens Up a Cosmological Pandora’s Box

Abstract

When One’s Birthday Opens Up a Cosmological Pandora’s Box Julius Bautista (bio) The common way of inquiring about someone’s birthday in Binisaya is to ask, kanus-a ka na tawo?—literally, when did you become a person? It is an intriguing feature of the Visayan worldview, one that may well be rooted in an ancient cosmological order, that the quintessential stage of one’s personhood is intuitively located not at conception but at the point in which we emerge into the world, when we take our first breath and attain an independent physical viability. The notion that personhood is emplaced upon birth does have serious social and even political implications, particularly in the Philippines, where the debates about the recently passed Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health (RH) Law have been dominated by issues of sexual morality, theology, abortion, and the link between demography and economic development. Yet, why is it that cosmological beliefs about personhood have not been considered a source of crucial insight into these discussions, even though such beliefs are important to the majority of those who are the most affected by the RH Law’s ramifications? This problematic remained in my mind as I considered Hannah Bulloch’s (2016) wonderful article, which is an attempt to grasp Visayan cosmological notions of fetal personhood in a manner that is well grounded in her observations of the practice of everyday life in Siquijor. It is refreshing and timely to read an ethnographically robust analysis that, at the very least, encourages us to take cosmology seriously in our discussions about such crucial legal and political issues. I agree with Bulloch’s central argument that, from a Binisaya perspective, personhood is processual and that having a “soul” is seen as a necessary but not sufficient condition for being a person. But I would suggest, further, that if we are to really take cosmology seriously, we have a responsibility to cultivate a finely tuned and nuanced sense of the supernatural entities that condition what a person is from a Binisaya perspective, as well as the extended spectrum of the process of personhood. With this in mind I offer what I hope could serve as an addendum to Bulloch’s interpretation of the ethnographic data. I suggest that, in addition [End Page 227] to the two stages of personhood discussed in her analysis, namely, spiritual accompaniment and ensoulment, there must be a much stronger emphasis on a third—that is, on one’s development of consciousness and will, buot, which is an equally crucial, discernible stage in the process of personhood. Resil B. Mojares (1997, 44) once wrote that personhood is not simply a matter of biology but of cosmology, and therefore it is important to grasp a Visayan worldview that conceives of everyday life as populated by a “surplus of souls.” A serious consideration of this cosmological order, particularly as it pertains to developmental personhood, prompts us to be cognizant of the distinction between at least two kinds of supernatural presences. Firstly, an embryo’s entry into the world is preceded by a state of spiritual accompaniment in which a gestating fetus develops in tandem with what is known in Binisaya as an umalagad—literally a companion or cohort that advocates for and protects the unborn as it starts to gain substantive, discernibly human physical form. An umalagad is an entity that does not ensoul the fetus per se, much less consummate its “full” personhood. Bulloch never mentions umalagad. But I do not think that she would disagree with this point. Bulloch (2016, 218 n. 5) conveys what her knowledge collaborators describe as kauban in pointing out “a view of the soul as accompanying a person but not necessarily being the essence of them.” Where things become interesting pertains to the stage in which a spiritual entity ensouls—or I would suggest a better word, “enflames”—the unborn, just as it emerges from the female’s womb. The living soul, that is, the one that animates the body of the unborn, is correctly identified in the article as kalag, literally, a flame. The crucial thing that should be specified, however, is that kalag infuses a newborn with ginhawa, a...