season 4, episode 13 - #SnortAndCackleBookClub book review - "babaylan sing back: philippine shamans and voice, gender, and place" by grace nono
snort & cackle season 4 comes to an end this week with our seasonal book club book review. this season we read babaylan sing back: philippine shamans and voice, gender, and place by grace nono. and with that, we are officially on an indefinite hiatus! if you love snort & cackle and want to hear more, you can support future seasons here. you can rebinge your favourite episodes in your podcast feed and subscribe so you don't miss any special one-off episodes and/or future seasons (we do have some sitting in the pipeline...).
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extra links:
find more books about filipinx ritual and traditional practices in the witchcraft bookshelf in the creative coven community
transcript
snort & cackle - season 4, episode 13 - #SnortAndCackleBookClub book review - "babaylan sing back: philippine shamans and voice, gender, and place" by grace nono
ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast where every day magic, work and ritual intersect. I'm your host, Ash Alberg, a queer fibre witch and hedge witch. Each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender and Place by Grace Nono.
Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.
Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]
Hello, sweet peas. This is the final episode for season four of Snort and Cackle and is also our final episode for the foreseeable future because we are gonna be going on an indefinite hiatus as I had mentioned at the beginning of the season. And so, we've got today's episode and then stay subscribed in your feed because we do have some special one-off episodes that will be coming down randomly in the next few months.
And also, if you listen to ... yes, last week's episode then we were chatting about the launch of the Sanctuary Hub which is the latest extension to the Creative Coven community. And I've been having some really fabulous chats with a bunch older guests from Snort and Cackle as well as some other folks.
And so, we are going to do our best to get the audio from those chats, which were hosted on Instagram Live and pop them into your podcast feed for you. I think the audio didn't work for all of them but we are going to do our best to be able to share that with you. And so, that will be coming into the feed in the next couple of weeks as we continue to celebrate the launch of the new Sanctuary Hub.
And if you are loving Snort and Cackle and wishing that there could be more of it, then joining the Creative Coven community is one of the best ways to do that. You can also sponsor future episodes yourself and/or if somebody who has deeper pockets and/or has a business and is interested in sponsoring larger series of episodes, then we can also definitely chat about that.
But the best way for the regular listener to be contributing to the future of Snort and Cackle is to join the Creative Coven community, because that is the space where it's our monthly membership space and it is chalk full of so many fabulous resources and tutorials and DIYs and reading.
We have a monthly get together on Zoom but it's also just generally the best way to be supporting all of the different projects that I do here at Sunflower Knit with my various things, including Snort and Cackle, including From Field to Skin (my fibershed advocacy side project), and then the other big creative projects that take a lot of time and may or may not ever get to a point where they're that financially viable, but creatively, and just generally feel more than viable.
So join the Creative Coven community and you can do that at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community. You can also find it by checking your ... and you can also find the Sanctuary Hub specifically. It's within the Creative Coven community but if you're curious about that, you can find it at ashalberg.com/sanctuary.
And so with that, we are going to get into our book review episode today. This season we were reading Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender and Place by Grace Nono. Grace Nono is a really famous Filipina singer and also a music ethnologist. Ethno musicologist, I think is the phrase or the term?
And this book was really great. It also, I apologize, because for those of you that were hoping for a easy breezy, casual summer read, this was not one of those. [Chuckles.] It was very much along the lines of season one's book review book club read, which was, if you recall, Witchcraft in Early Modern Poland, and that one was very academic and textbooky including in its price.
Phillipine Sham— or Babaylan Sing Back is less so on the price side but very much so in the actual reading. It's got a hefty bibliography and notes section. The language that is used is extremely academic which makes sense, because of course you've got a ethno musicologist who is writing it. It's written for that audience.
I did have the thought as I was reading through it, just between the academic language that was used and then also how very specific the descriptions could get in terms of how the voice was used, which is a very large part of, especially the first portion of the book where the timber of the voice and the tone and all of that, even if you remove the different languages, because as this book is yeah, is interviewing different indigenous Filipinos from different regions around the Philippines, and as such has a lot of different language where even if you’re like Lowlander Filipino who, or Filipinx, who is, living in Manila and you speak Tagalog, that's still not necessarily gonna help you because the different indigenous languages, in the same way that indigenous languages here in what's now called Canada, are very different and diverse and distinct.
It's similar in this book, as Grace moves around through different regions and is speaking with different people from different areas of the country. And so between all of those things, I thought to myself, if I was not both university educated and so used to reading those like heavily academic books, and then also specifically trained in voice work, like I am a trained singer and also a trained actor and as such like viscerally, like physically aware of what is being spoken about and then intellectually understand what is being spoken about.
It did make me think, for the casual reader who maybe does not have that experience, does not have that training then would some of the what I think is very important parts of this book go over somebody's head? I don't know, because again, because I come from that background, I literally do not know what it would be like to have zero experience in voice work and voice training and the vocabulary and physicality around that.
If I did not have that, what then reading about it would be like. So I can't tell you. If that is you, then you can certainly tell me. Get in touch and let me know. Maybe it makes lots of sense to people. Maybe it is very unfamiliar.
I personally found it really interesting to read about and especially where gender starts to become spoken about, but there was a lot that in this book gets covered.
And also that ... like some of it feels like a really intense, deep dive into really specific things. And then also like really broad, large, complicated topics get talked about throughout the book. And then also there's like things that get talked about that then feels like there's massive gaps missing. And I feel like I always run into this when we're reading these books for the book review episode where I'm like, oh, but there's so much that isn't dive ... dove... diven? Dove? Dived into?
Then I have to remind myself that it's ridiculous to expect that one book that's, around 200 pages is gonna be able to pick apart all of those things and that actually that's the point of going down each of our individual rabbit holes of interest. You need so many sources. It's not up to just one person to provide all of the information that you might need in order to get a complete picture of something.
But it does make me frustrated because I wish that there was an easy way of addressing all of it. And perhaps it makes me frustrated just in the way that, because social media in particular has made the illusion of something being like really simple and yeah, you can just break it all down in one caption or in a quick series of tweets or something like that.
Like I know that's not possible, especially when we're talking about large systemic oppressions and things as big as colonialism and gender-based violence and queerness and the role major religions have played in destroying language and culture and practices and rituals of more indigenous cultures. And like it's, it is why the Creative Coven community has so many different book lists.
Again, coming from an academic background, I do really enjoy research. It's also why, with Snort and Cackle, we've made a point of having a book club that has a book review episode each season because it's one little kind of tip in and also it's very much lacking. And because of that, you will find in your show notes for this episode ... I don't know why this book in particular just felt like it like hit me more in the lack of filling things out or if it's just whatever headspace I'm in right now, but you will find in your show notes, this episode, links for more books about decolonizing and decolonization.
They're primarily from the Turtle Island perspective, but you will also find that there's a lot of overlap for those of you who live in particularly Canada and/or the States and are familiar with decolonization literature here, then there's very much overlap, which is interesting and we'll dive into that a little bit in this book review episode, but like the tactics of colonization, regardless of who was doing the colonizing are the fucking same. And it's super fucked. I got no better words for that. [Chuckles.]
And we will we'll dig into that. But there, there will be a list of books there that you can dive into more if you want to learn more about that, and there's also going to be a link for a podcast episode that is specifically about queerness in the Philippines because this book does actually get into identities within one indigenous community in the Philippines. But again, colonization has wreaked havoc.
And one thing that I personally found like really hard and frustrating and that I just generally find weird and frustrating across the board, no matter where it's being applied, and perhaps is feeling a little bit more active right now just because we've just passed Pride month and it's Non-Binary Awareness Day this week and ... is how binary this book feels and how the discussion of gender, while there is an inclusion of trans identity and experience within the book, it is still very much binary in the vast majority of experiences being men and women and specifically cis men and cis women.
And even for the trans identity, it's still within that binary of man and woman and ... [Sighs.] Queer identities have always been around. We've always been here and also colonization and Christianity in particular have done a really great job of acting as though we don't exist and that we haven't existed. And as a queer person, we're constantly trying to find queer ancestors and reading between the lines of written records that have worked really hard to erase us and erased our experiences in a similar way to the way that colonization tries to erase Indigenous existence and experience and active history and current reality.
There's a podcast episode from a queer podcast that I listen to and I'm subscribed to that is about queer experience in the Philippines and queer language in the Philippines. And then also if you want to find more books about ritual practices in the Philippines, you can check out the witchcraft bookshelf in the Creative Coven community because there are several books listed in there. If this book was interesting to you and you wanna dive more into that, there's a bunch of books that I've found in the process of researching this particular book and so those are listed there.
And then also, for specifically herbalism related to Philippine herbs, herb from the Philippines and plants from the Philippines, you can find that in the plants bookshelf in the Creative Coven community.
One thing ... I say off the top, we're already like 16 minutes into this episode. [Chuckles.] But one thing off the top as far as this book that I think is really interesting in terms of this podcast where like season one, I was really looking at the language of witchcraft, and as the seasons have moved through, you may have noticed that we've shifted the languaging more into ritual and magic, and that is because witchcraft itself is a loaded word for some. It is also an identity that doesn't necessarily fit depending on where somebody is coming from, what their own background is and what their own practices are.
But ritual and magic very much are applicable across identities and experiences and ancestries. And so in a similar way, the term Babaylan, which is specific in the Philippines and related to ritual healers and shamans and shamanic practices, ritual healers and spirit workers. It is also not the term that is used across the board in for people who actually are like ritual healers and spirit workers.
Again, we are talking about thousands of islands with Indigenous communities who all have their own languages. And so, as such the term that is used changes depending on what language you are speaking, which makes sense, that's how language works. But also interestingly, the term Babaylan itself has very much been co-opted in what I think is meant to be like a positive way but then ends up being problematic in the same way that the term witch has been co-opted in a similar way, but becomes problematic in that both terms are proto-feminist and taken to mean the equivalent of like women's empowerment and more specifically cis women's empowerment.
And so in the same way that there is, “Witch is an acronym for Woman in Total Control of Herself,” which I have massive issues with. Fuck off. If you are like, witch can be a really broad category and you don't need to identify as a specific person or come from a specific background to identify as a witch. And also, a witch is not automatically any woman or any feminist, whether you're a cis woman or someone who identifies as a woman.
You, you don't need to identify as a woman in order to identify as a witch and also being a witch does not automatically ... yes, it can, it can be a powerful tool within feminist circles and intersectional feminist circles, but also as witches who are actual practicing witches, it is still an identity that is ... can be really dangerous to be associating yourself with. It is something where, especially we are seeing, depending on which country you are in, there are a lot of laws.
Here in Canada, there are laws on the books from like the 1800s that have not been taken off of the books that very actively discriminate against practices of witchcraft. There is a lot of mistrust of witchcraft. There's a lot of mistrust of ritual practices and non-Western biomedical healing practices. There is a dismissal of spirit work that is not related to the monotheistic major religions.
It's okay to talk to God. It is not a ... and it's okay to potentially be calling down your angels. It is not okay to be talking to ghosts or to other non-human spirits. It's not okay to do travel or like shamanic journeying, unless you are paying money through capitalist systems, whatever. And similarly with this book and when we're talking about Indigenous identities in the Philippines, there is the Babaylan of the elite, which is primarily richer, at least middle class and/or upper class Filipinas who are looking for individual like personal spiritual enlightenment and their co-opting of the turn Babaylan for that is extremely different to the lived experience of Babaylan and other spiritual workers and healers in the rural areas of the Philippines who are frequently living in abject poverty and are not provided with resources and/or their practices are very much shunned in the nicest way and in the worst way, violently oppressed.
And interestingly, the role, the role of the church and also of Islam, there's certainly, in the Philippines, the church has taken over a very large section, different ... there's Baptist, there's Protestant, primarily Baptist and Catholic influences across the Philippines as a result of missionaries.
And then the, there is also another section of the Philippines where the influence of Islam is larger. In all of those cases, we are still dealing with colonization and missionary from major monotheistic religions that are based on the concept of a singular God who is spoken to by prophets. Whether it's Jesus or Muhammad, like you're still dealing with there is a very direct line to God and nobody else is allowed to communicate.
And it's still very actively going on where that missionary practice is continuing in the more rural areas of the Philippines and where even in the case studies that are mentioned in the book review, there are people who become guides for Grace as the author is traveling through different regions and needing to connect with these different healers and have people who can either lead her through to meet with these people and/or to be translating for them because they are speaking these different languages.
And the people doing the leading are frequently now, like very Christian, like missionaries who are also ex-Babaylans themselves and ex-spiritual practitioners themselves. And so now they are often shunning these practices and yet have a really specific personal relationship with the practices and understand the practices and the rituals in a very like hands on way and also now believe that those practices are sinful specifically and need to be stopped or oppressed or replaced with the word of God.
And it's a really interesting shift that reminds me of the extremism that we have seen happening here in Canada and the States through the course of the pandemic where people who may have had experiences with ... I'm thinking on the left side people who maybe were looking for more natural remedies than to be relying on like Big Pharma for things, and then went like fully extreme over to being like anti-vaxxers and where it's okay, how the fuck did you get there?
Like where ... ? You, you understand how some of these things have worked and have use, and now you've gone so far to the extreme or folks who were on one side of the political spectrum and then went [makes wooshing sound] all the way over to the other. And it's like how do you go from one side of beliefs over to the polar opposite where not only do you no longer believe that despite having your own lived experience with it, but also you're going to like actively be condemning and oppressing and trying to stop others from experiencing that?
Maybe my example of the anti-vaxxers is not a good one ‘cause I think ... yeah, I don't know. It's just, I think it's the extremism of it. It's not necessarily like where it sits on any political spectrum or left versus right or whatever. It's more the extremism of it where it's, not only do we no longer believe this, but we need to actively condemn anybody who does believe it and pull them over to our side.
Maybe it's that like very binary, black and white approach to it that is making me think of the way that the world feels here in Canada and the States these days. But yeah, like to be ... like, that is also, it does make sense that they're related because it is that role of colonialism and capitalism and these systems of oppressive power that are very large and use the same fucking tactics and have for hundreds and hundreds of years.
And so, while here in ... I think one thing that I found interesting was the fact that these missions are still so very active in the rural areas of the Philippines, where it feels so like, we're not done yet. We need to stop these people from believing their things. And I'm a white person so like also my experience is obviously not that of an Indigenous person here in Canada.
Like I, my Indigenous friends might say no, that's still a hundred percent like what is happening. But I think it's the like fact that there are still so many communities that are rural and also harder to get to. Like the topography and geography of the Philippines is really interesting in the way that it has impacted the role of colonialism and the timeframe of colonialism in the Philippines. Highlanders who are further away from the shores have maintained their indigenous practices without the impact of the church, and I'm saying the church, I'm meaning any colonizing forces. They've maintained it for a longer period of time so you see that there's it takes longer for certain areas to be impacted, and also that for lowlanders that the role of colonization has lasted for a much longer period of time for them and as a result also then the attitudes, when looking at the folks who are still maintaining their indigeneity is very looked down upon.
Whereas for here, the like colonization is still very active. Like we've got a fucking queen as the technical figurehead, I think, of Canada. The like active warring of slash like missionaries going and doing what they do was very much more in a very specific timeframe that was also a few hundred years ago now. It was, like 500 to 200-ish years ago that was happening, whereas in the Philippines, that was when the Spaniards were doing their shit and then about a hundred years ago, then the Americans came into play.
There's also been influence from China and also from Japan and the position of the Philippines and also how resource rich the con--, the islands are has resulted in different playing out and also way more forces coming in at various points. And yeah, I don't know. It's just it's ... [Sighs.] I don't ... like, it's interesting. And not in any easy to pick part way or, and certainly not in a good way, but in the way that it feels like it's still a very active ... I think it's specifically like the role that the church is playing in having missionaries and how active they are, feels weird to me, and yet that absolutely just comes from the fact that I happen to live in a country where that happened before and so now there are still, I know people who have trained as missionaries.
All of the folks that I know are queer now and have left that practice are like my age and were training as missionaries that then they would be going elsewhere in the world. Sometimes back to their own ancestral land, sometimes back to ... not back to, sometimes to other areas of the world to do that missionary work.
So it's not as though missionary work doesn't exist now, obviously it does. It's just that it's ... it does not exist in that specific way here, where I live or places where I have lived. And as such, to be reading about how that impact is having on indigenous communities right now and on ritual practice practitioners right now in another country is weird because to me I'm like, oh these tactics of colonization are what I'm like, oh yeah, definitely. We did that here too, but now the way that colonization plays out here looks different in that it's codified in law differently.
It plays out in, through the role of capitalism in a really specific way now. And also, there is like more active attempts to correct that and for people to be able to be regaining their languages and taking up space again, and for folks who are not Indigenous to be like, acknowledging whose lands are they on.
And we certainly are not doing a fabulous job of it. There's with the unmarked graves that have been being found over the last several months, year or so maybe, it's very clear that there's so far to fucking go. But with this book it feels almost like there's ... it's okay, how long is it gonna be before it gets to that stage where the missionary work stops and where people are able to continue doing their practices and we stop trying to suppress Indigenous practitioners and Indigenous cultures just generally?
Another interesting thing within that though, is the role of ... so there's absolutely like white saviorism, but also just generally saviorism for non-Indigenous folks coming into Indigenous communities and that's not okay. And also there's this ... the, there's certain things where we're like, okay like saviorism is not okay and also neither is gender-based violence. And it's not as though gender-based violence doesn't exist in, I put in this, I put this in quotes, like “modern” societies or industrialized societies.
And I think maybe this is where it comes. There's free-- in, in the, these very explicit ways where it's, where the gender-based violence is absolutely allowed and accepted, and there are arranged marriages of children without their consent and where there are dowries being paid, and in order to get out an, of an abusive relationship, you are needing to pay back dowries.
Like all of that is super fucked and not okay. And also because it’s placed within a cultural context then it makes it a lot easier to like other it and say that's not okay and you’re doing it wrong. And those same things happen here in more insidious ways potentially.
And so, if we look at our own histories and what is happening now, it's just, it's the same shit being framed in a different way, and because it's not within a specific cultural reference point, then it makes it harder to pinpoint it down. Makes it a lot easier to like point to somebody else and be like, you've got these things, they are practices and you’re making them okay and that's not okay.
But then not doing, having it more insidious by not having it couched within like, here's a specific also like geographically situated group of practices that are doing the exact same shit. And so, the book makes a point of saying it's not necessarily that the role of colonialism changes what was happening that was bad, or that that like bringing in a new a set of rules is going to stop those things. It's just that the various waves of colonialism just allow people to change their reasons or excuses for gender inequality, and then adapt that to new customs.
So, in both cases, both colonialism and indigenous customs that are marked about in the book control women and it's just different excuses are given for why that is okay. But then the role of colonialism also then makes any of the cultural references and practices of the Indigenous communities not okay. And so it's okay, we're not gonna allow you to have the practices that may have actually been how you fought back against these systems of oppression within your own history, but now we're gonna have you adapt them to new rules and those new rules are gonna take you that much longer to figure out, okay, now how do we get our way out of this set of reasons why now you're making it okay for gender-based violence?
So like, it, it then also complicates matters where when we're looking at practices that are traditionally oral and are not written down where then when we're writing them down yes, it helps them to not be lost, especially as Indigenous communities are fractured and language is lost and all of that's very much a specific tactic of colonialism, but then also because we're writing them down and making them concrete, it removes the liveness of them, and it removes also the way that then context makes it very important in terms of whether something can be harmful or is yes, this is our history, and also we question our history and we dialogue about it and we challenge it.
And so, an example of that's given in the book is with one group where there's this epic song and story that is very much the history. And if you were to be like, here's one thing that explains the history and culture of this particular indigenous group, the epic is called Tudbulol, and when it's written down, then it can be extremely patriarchal, reinforcing of horrific gender norms and excusing of gender-based violence.
And also, in actual practice, when the song is being shared and sung, then the individuals who are singing it put in their own context, they can challenge it. The people who are then listening can challenge it and laugh at it and agree with some parts and disagree with others. And so, if we look at it just on face value on the page, then it's oh, it's just reinforcing violence in the patriarchy, but context is everything, and it makes me think of like Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare. It's a common or a ... yeah, it's a common reference point. For anybody who has grown up in Western schooling, Shakespeare is something that everybody studies or has been historically studied. Taming of the Shrew is notorious for how like anti-feminist it can be and for how it justifies violence against women and how it reinforces the patriarchy.
And also, it is a show that I have loved since I was a teenager because of how you can fuck with it and because of how, depending on how you do it, it can be extremely feminist. And so, the same thing applies here when we're talking about this particular epic song nd I think just generally applies, like if we look at something just on face value and just how it's written on the page, then it becomes flat, it becomes one-dimensional, it becomes historic rather than active and live.
And it removes all of the nuance. And yes, it keeps it alive in terms of, we at least have a written record and so if the language gets lost, we don't necessarily lose it, but it also means that we lose all of the context around it and that context is everything. And it also is really important in terms of, if we just say, your ways are wrong and they're ... again, I'm putting these words in quotation ... uncivilized, unmodern. They're barbaric is like older words that were used, but it's also people's history. It's their sense of self, it's their culture.
And looking in from the outside, you don't know everything. And so yes, obviously gender-based violence is wrong and needs to stop, but every culture, including ours, has okayed gender-based violence. Ask any sexual assault survivor why they don't report. There is a reason. The systems are not set up to support us or to protect us.
And so, why the fuck would we assume that we know any better than anybody else? So, I don't know that's necessarily helpful in any way, shape or form, but I think that's also kind of the point, is that so much gets talked about in the book and there's no like simple solution of any of it, but I think what does come out very clearly from the book is that you need to fucking talk to people and listen to their own stories and listen to their lived experiences.
And like, the last section of the book provides a case study of a practitioner who lives or has lived primarily in the States, and so is part of the diaspora instead, and how that diasporic experience now makes it different. And how like applying these traditional practices when away from ancestral homelands complicates the matter. It changes the way in which the study happens, it changes the way in which the practice happens, but it also allows for a newer way or like an adapted way of practicing.
And so where so many people, including myself, become part of diaspora just because of the way that people move around the world these days. And immigration happens and conflict forces people to move, even if they didn't want to. There are a lot of people who experience that diasporic like crunchiness of, how do you connect when you're not on your ancestral homelands?
And it also forces us to question this concept of indigeneity needing to be specifically stuck on ancestral homelands only, and being relegated to a place and that any other practice outside of that lacks validity and that also the ancestral practices on their ancestral homeland are somehow part of the past, even though they are still actively happening.
And so, I think it's a, like a good kind of poking at this concept of like blood quantum and of approving status or of needing to ... like, there's, we, there, we don't want cultural appropriation and we also don't want to be falling into the trap of another trap of colonialism, which is to be reliant on written down, recorded blood history. There's ... again, it lacks the nuance, it lacks the context. It misses potentially a huge amount of experiences and of changes, if it's, if somebody was adopted into a community, but they don't have blood, does that make them more or less valid than somebody who has blood but is not, has not grown up in that community?
And like, all of those nuances are lost when we just say it's only valid if _____. And so I think the book makes a good record recording of how that is complex and how there's no simple answer and there's no single answer that addresses how to, how to deal with those things. And yeah, I don't know.
Another thing that I found interesting with the book was that despite the fact that the languages could be extremely different and the actual practices and rituals could be quite different, there was still commonality across the groups and across regions of those who have spirit powers to have main spirits that they work with direct contact who help or decree or guide or connect them with others, and how it's not just ... [Sighs.]
I guess it's, for Christians where it's the priest or the pastor, whoever like the person who has been relegated as you are the direct line to God and you are the one who does the work on our behalf. It's just that this person has contact with way more spirits and with a lot more God-like figures.
And I think that's the thing that drives me nuts about monotheistic religions is how it’s like, it's the same fucking thing. Like they're just talking to more people. And why do you ... ?
It reminds me of a bit from one of Trevor Noah's stand-up shows where he's talking about the way that colonization by the Brits in India must have occurred where it's this whole like bit around somebody coming and claiming, coming and claiming land on behalf of God and the Queen and the person saying, “Which God, who's your god? You have to tell me what their god, what's their name?” And it's, “God.” “But which god?”
And because there are so many gods in especially Hindu practices, and so it's like, why are you gonna make a big thing about if they're talking to more gods than just one god? You have one God, congratulations. They have more. Yeah, I don't know.
I think it's just like the way that humans generally frustrate me where it's, you don't believe the same thing that I do, therefore you are bad and need to change what you are doing to fit what I am doing. There's like large things that we can be working on to be better to one another and also, that doesn't mean that we all have to agree on the exact same thing. That would be incredibly boring and also probably highly toxic.
Yeah. I don't know. So, one last thing that I wanna address, because this episode is getting a little bit on the long side, is the role of transness in this particular book. And I'm only gonna briefly talk about it because I don't feel like enough information was provided in the book outside of the case studies that were provided to really dive into it, and this is also why I'm linking to a bunch of other things in the show notes for those of you who want to dive more into it.
But one thing that I'm interested in and curious about probably, and probably like moving forward will be doing more study into in, in other regions as well is the role of spiritual-based transness. And so specifically the two trans individuals who are recorded in the book, their transness is specifically controlled by and comes from their relation to spirits that they have a relationship with and work with.
And their transness and the physicality of their transness is decreed by these spirits and also controlled by these spirits, and so if they anger the spirits, then their access to their transness is also restricted. And I find that really interesting and it makes me wonder, like, where else has that been a situation and a case?
And what other communities around the world has this been the experience of trans people?
And for Filipinx trans folk, like how many folks were even aware that this is a way that some transness happened and does that apply across all communities? It does feel quite different from my communications with Two-Spirit friends and the way that their Two-Spirit identity happens. And one thing that I will say is that the roles and like practices that trans individuals play in their own communities is very still rooted in a gender binary.
And so, it also makes me wonder, what about the non-binary and gender nonconforming folks and historically, like how did potentially their connection with their own spirits impact that? Was it similar? It's also interesting in terms of this concept of spirit as not being like a personal thing and of transness not being a personal identity like thing that you're, that you're working with, but that it is specifically part of being of service to your community and that it is decreed by others and by others, other-worldly others, so that you are of service in a specific way.
And I find that also really interesting because it is very much not the way that I do anything in my life. I believe in community care because we need to be communal creatures and we need to care about one another. But the idea of you have to do ... and I guess this is also where like, you are given gifts and those gifts are, they are gifts, but there is also responsibility that comes with them. And if you don't take that responsibility seriously, then shitty things can happen.
So, I don't know. I like, I don't think that this is ... I think I'm like opening up a can of worms here but I do think that it is worth mentioning. So on that note, this episode is about an hour long at this point. I have absolutely not gone into all of the different points of this book and I have so many notes. I, and also, I'm like not the best person to be talking about this particular generally.
So, I'm also going to be linking in the show notes back to some of our past episodes with Filinpinx guests, so that you can hear their experiences and chats with them and how they are working their own rituals and practices, all of whom are part of the diaspora. So that's where we're at.
You can find copies of the book online, fairly easily. There is an e-book version as well as physical copies. I would love to listen to an audio book version of this book because it is so rooted in voice and in just like hearing different languages spoken. I think that would be really fucking cool. Maybe someday it'll be available. It is not currently, so you're gonna have to read the book instead.
But it is a really great book. I do rec-- it was really interesting. And if you, again, you are interested in more books about specifically ritual practices in the Philippines, I have a bunch listed in the Creative Coven community on the witchcraft bookshelf, just because I ended up finding a shit ton of them while I was researching this particular book.
Here we are sweet peas. We are at the end of season four, we're gonna be on hiatus indefinitely. There is at least one special edition episode that'll be coming out in later this fall and I'm also going to try and get at least some of those conversations from our Instagram Lives during the Sanctuary Hub launch, get the audio extracted and popped into your feed to be coming out later this month that you'll be able to listen to, hopefully.
They will not have transcripts but I will make sure that the show notes link to the Instagram Lives so that if you ... the replays of them. And so, hopefully if you have different accessibility tools then they will be able to do that in a better way and/or if reading lips is helpful, then they’re video records. You'll be able to read lips.
So that's where we're at. Thank you so much for joining me. This has been an absolute delight. I can't believe that we got a whole fucking year of the podcast done. I'm really excited for a break, if I'm being honest. I'm fucking exhausted and I have a bunch of other projects that I have to turn my attention to.
But I am also really excited to continue having conversations with people about these big things. I'm hoping that in the future we’ll have some kind of like magical chunk of money will appear so that I can just devote a bunch of time to reading a whole bunch of episodes and then having just like an entire season of book club book reviews. [Laughs.] There's so many books that I wanna talk to you all about.
There's also just more conversations that I wanna have. So be sure to follow us on Instagram @snortandcackle. Follow me on my main account @sunflowerknit. Even if there's not specifically Snort and Cackle events that are happening. I love having these conversations and I will definitely continue having these conversations via various things.
You can sign up for my weekly newsletter, which is the best way to find things without being reliant on algorithms at ashalberg.com/jointhecoven. Sorry, ashalberg.com/join-the-coven and sign up for the newsletter there. You can find my online courses on the website, ashalberg.com, buy various goodies from me, herbalist goodies, natural dyeing goodies, books, lots of fun things.
And of course, join the Creative Coven community to stay engaged and to support various projects like this podcast. Thank you so much for joining me for the past year. If you are just joining us, you can re-binge all of your favorite episodes and all of the episodes in your podcast feed.
And thanks again, sweet peas. I will talk to you soon.
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