During my 36-year employment at the Embassy of the U.S.A. in Manila I took on, among other roles, that of program officer for the Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation. This position brought me to many odd locations in the country. Some of the projects I handled were the restoration of the baptistery and pillars of the San Vicente Ferrer Church, in Nueva Vizcaya; an ICOMOS conference on the conservation of the Banaue Rice terraces in Ifugao; the documentation of the Tabon Caves in Lipuun Point, Quezon, Palawan; the conservation of the Kabayan Mummy Caves, in Benguet; the restoration of the altar and pulpit of Lazi Church, in Siquijor; and the documentation of the oral traditions hudhud and alim of the Ifugao. I also had the singular experience of traveling with our Public Affairs Officer to attend a conference commemorating the seizure of the Balangiga bells in Samar: it was here that I learned of the rebel group Pulajanes, later known as Tadtad when they expanded to Mindanao, and then as Haring Bakal when they established their presence in Manila. I was attracted to Haring Bakal after studying the more than 50 systems of Philippine magic, because it was the most difficult to be initiated into, since it involved intense, physical pain, and I knew that very few of my Friends and Followers would have the guts to follow suit. (I have a Facebook Friend who always claims to have joined a "Haring Bakal" group somewhere in Luzon; he took a video of his initiation and it wasn't a real one at all.)
Before my retirement in 2015 I met a man in one of the places I visited in the Visayas. We quickly became close friends. He introduced me to Utol J. and Utol L., who became my blessers and initiators.
Here is what I had to go through:
1) First, a pandong, before which the blesser lights a candle on his altar filled with Catholic images and studies the flame to determine whether we should proceed or not. He then places his hands on top of my head, while I am seated, and recites certain oraciones.
2) An assistant, also a Haring Bakal member, asks me to rise and then pins my arms firmly behind my back, and I am instructed to tense up my stomach and leg muscles.
3) The blesser takes a bare-blade katana from the altar and strikes me--really hard--with the bladed edge three times on my stomach and twice on each leg, for a total of seven strikes. (It is the custom to come back every year to obtain more strikes until one amasses a total of 49 strikes.) Each blow was very painful. I yelled at every blow (this seemed to diminish the pain). We were in a house beside the water and no one could hear us after all, except for the blesser's wife, who was in the kitchen and evidently inured to such goings-on. My stomach and thighs turn black and blue, and then purple and yellow, over the next two weeks. To this day, though, I am perplexed as to why the blade never so much as sliced my skin.
4) I am given a one-eyed coconut, which represents my head, and I am to place it in a safe place in my bedroom where no one else can touch it. I am encouraged to polish and varnish it, which I do not do because I like its rough appearance, but I place it on a brass tripod.
5) I am given a bakus, or belt, this one made by the blesser himself, for my protection.
6) I am also given a pair of tuay-tuay, a pair of knee bones from a little boy's cadaver. Legend has it that Haring Bakal members take these from cemeteries. I am instructed to pray for the owner of the knee bones and to treat the knee bones with much respect. I place them inside security wallets that are meant to be strapped round my knees or shins; the bones are supposed to endow me with speed and invisibility.
7) The second blesser slices my forearms and inserts two mutya ng _____ (sorry, I am not allowed to identify them) inside each forearm. He does this with a rusty Gillette blade, pushing the mutyas in with used matchsticks. I obtain other items from him: a head kerchief and a red vest that are supposed to make me impervious to bullets (I take this only figuratively). He instructs me to abstain from bakal (steel) for 49 days. When I go back to the hotel that evening, however, I forget this last precaution, and I take a heavy dinner using steel flatware. Beginning that night I manifest the symptoms of tetanus: I have continuous diarrhea and continuous vomiting. I am down for about three days, and my forearms, where the mutyas were inserted, bloat as though they contained pong-pong balls.
8) I return to Manila with other items: three kinds of lana, or oil, in separate bottles, known as Round 7, used for diagnosis, for healing, and for shielding against black spells, and two hardbound volumes of Haring Bakal oraciones, among them the Round 7 incantations.
9) For the next two weeks at home I see shadows out of the corner of my eye, and I feel as though a spirit has followed me to my house, from the Visayas. Once I see the image of a young man through a mirror--the little boy whose tuay-tuay I own, now, possibly, a young man in the astral realm after a few years. I name him Diego. I do not fail to pray for him and to promise to permanently place the tuay-tuay in a church columbarium as soon as we transfer our family members' ashes there. I have never worn the tuay-tuay, as a matter of fact they are still securely placed inside our family columbarium.
Later I learned that the Bahasa name for "the sun" is "hari", because "king" is "rajah". "Haring Bakal" probably means "the sun that is made of steel", a very masculine image. Indeed, whenever I am with Haring Bakal members, they are like Essenes, to which, it is said, John the Baptist belonged. There is never any mention of women.
My first blesser suggested that I establish a Haring Bakal group in Cubao, which I never did due to my many other priorities and activities. I must say, though, that I seem to have had many narrow escapes ever since that time in 2015--whether it was because of my Haring Bakal initiation or because I am a Rabbit, I do not know. I even feel that the mutyas embedded in my forearms are protecting me against the current pandemic.
Just a narrative I thought I'd share with you this evening, for what it's worth.
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