What is an Albularyo?

What is an Albularyo?

There are many alias for the the so called faith healer in Philippines. They call them witch doctor, folk doctor, folk medicine and a lot mote. Less they, know that it rooted from a much deeper past and culture of the Philippines. These faith healers came from the shaman-like people in past before the Spanish conqueror came. These shamans are called the Babaylan. They believe that these people are different form the ordinary person. They have a gift that can see and communicate with a being who are in different dimensions. These extra dimensional beings are call the Engkantos or Elementals. These are spiritual beings distinguished from angels and the others. They are believed to be gods and goddesses of the forest, waters, sands, and winds. Some of them are guiding people to prosperity but few of them were trying to enslave people by taking away their souls from their bodies or in the other hand they try to possessed a person to walk into our physical world. The Babaylans are the ambassadors between the spiritual and us the physical beings. They were taught by order “wordly” being the medicine and cure to illnesses which are unexplained by our modern science. The Babaylans can cure spiritual illnesses and could cast out an evil being which is possessing the human body.

Hundreds of years later, here came the colonizers. The conquered Philippines and spread Christianiy. They accused the practices of Babaylans as witchcraft and a work of evil. Many were burnt alive or punished with death if found out doing the folk medicines. Later, as the years past by....secretly came the Divinos. They are like the Babaylans who are a believer of elementals but the source of their extraordinary powers were based from the characters which are found from the Bible. But in different way... They also believe in this so called “Lihim na Karunungan”...or the esoteric teachings in the Philippines. This includes practices and enchantments which are not found in the Bible... Actually they use both Biblical and Folk style of prayer and pig Latin spells. They believe that these spells are powerful and has a spirit guide itself that would intervene if needed or being called upon. These spells came from the book which are found in the forest handed over from the divine beings. Some spells are being dreamed of or whispered. The enchantments and spells are a mixture of heavenly message and an elemental dialects.

The world is too mysterious just to judge that things are just naive. People are naive or blinded by pride of profession or drown with material desire. There is too much to explore in our beautiful world. We just have open our minds. They might say it's crazy but the crazier part is to act like a machine manipulated by the bullshit of society.