The hand is almost never used to point a direction.  Instead, the head is extended in the direction indicated —­ not with a nod, but with a thrusting forward of the face and a protruding of the open lips; it is a true lip gesture.  I have seen it practically everywhere in the Islands, among pagans, Mohammedans, and Christians.

PART 8

Religion

Spirit belief

The basis of Igorot religion is every man’s belief in the spirit world —­ the animism found widespread among primitive peoples.  It is the belief in the ever-present, ever-watchful a-ni’-to, or spirit of the dead, who has all power for good or evil, even for life or death.  In this world of spirits the Igorot is born and lives; there he constantly entreats, seeks to appease, and to cajole; in a mild way he threatens, and he always tries to avert; and there at last he surrenders to the more than matchful spirits, whose numbers he joins, and whose powers he acquires.

All things have an invisible existence as well as a visible, material one.  The Igorot does not explain the existence of earth, water, fire, vegetation, and animals in invisible form, but man’s invisible form, man’s spirit, is his speech.  During the life of a person his spirit is called “ta’-ko.”  After death the spirit receives a new name, though its nature is unchanged, and it goes about in a body invisible to the eye of man yet unchanged in appearance from that of the living person.  There seems to be no idea of future rewards or punishments, though they say a bad a-ni’-to is sometimes driven away from the others.

The spirit of all dead persons is called “a-ni’-to” —­ this is the general name for the soul of the dead.  However, the spirits of certain dead have a specific name.  Pin-teng’ is the name of the a-ni’-to of a beheaded person; wul-wul is the name of the a-ni’-to of deaf and dumb persons —­ it is evidently an onomatopoetic word.  And wong-ong is the name of the a-ni’-to of an insane person.  Fu-ta-tu is a bad a-ni’-to, or the name applied to the a-ni’-to which is supposed to be ostracized from respectable a-ni’-to society.

Besides these various forms of a-ni’-to or spirits, the body itself is also sometimes supposed to have an existence after death.  Li-mum’ is the name of the spiritual form of the human body.  Li-mum’ is seen at times in the pueblo and frequently enters habitations, but it is said never to cause death or accident.  Li-mum’ may best be translated by the English term “ghost,” although he has a definite function ascribed to the rather fiendish “nightmare” —­ that of sitting heavily on the breast and stomach of a sleeper.

The ta’-ko, the soul of the living man, is a faithful servant of man, and, though accustomed to leave the body at times, it brings to the person the knowledge of the unseen spirit life in which the Igorot constantly lives.  In other words, the people, especially the old men, dream dreams and see visions, and these form the meshes of the net which has caught here and there stray or apparently related facts from which the Igorot constructs much of his belief in spirit life.