Building a home for ‘Bu’lul’

KIANGAN IDOL The “bu’lul” with outstretched arms is unique only in Kiangan. —KARLSTON LAPNITEN

A “tinagtag-u” (the Ifugao term for a conventional statue) becomes a “bu’lul” (god) through a consecration ritual performed only by the highest order of “mumbaki” (priests).

The ritual invites the bu’lul to live in the wood carving to make it divine.

The transfer is usually considered successful when a bystander or one of the mumbaki performing the ritual is possessed by spirits.

American anthropologist Roy Barton, who lived with the Ifugao in the early 1900s, wrote about a mumbaki who was possessed during a ritual.

Dancing with bu’lul

During the consecration, a frail woman, obviously possessed, leaped several meters high and then danced with the bu’lul for an hour.

Usually, a vision or an omen would prompt a family to carve a statue for the bu’lul. A mumbaki would recognize the omen when he heard a piece of wood “buzzing” as it floated along the Ibulao River.

Any family could request for a bu’lul statue, although in most cases only a member of the “kadangyan” (nobility) can afford the arduous preparations and lavish rituals required to own one.

Several mumbaki in Hungduan town said it would take six weeks to complete the rituals, which end with the bu’lul being bathed in blood of a sacrificial animal before the statue is stored in the house or granary. —Karlston Lapniten