The conquistadores came one day in the 16th century and built a villa where there was only the wide river separating a small settlement from an older town named after the Serpent.
Naga. Naga, the Serpent.
A church was built near the river, and another smaller church was set up closer to the Remontados, or those who had gone back to the mountains. A school for priests, or at least for young men who would approximate the holiness of those who would move on to wear a special vestment and guard the shrines, was laid out.
A group of brave, perhaps naïve, perhaps fatal to fate, Catholic Sisters of the Hijas de Caridad or Daughters of Charity would wade ashore somewhere in Pasacao, in 1868, after traveling for months from another distant shore and far-off culture. A school for girls they would set up. These girls would be taught to pray and be good wives and mothers. When learning changed, the prayerful girls and women would go into subjects that made them think.
Now, that settlement, which was given the name of the conquistador’s birthplace out there in the Old World, has embraced the town by the river. Nueva Caceres it was known first, and then the site went back to being Naga again. The old men and women said the name was after the tall trees that were plentiful in the area. The other old men and women remembering old tales remembered the Serpent in the River. The Serpent, when angered, summoned the flood and swept homes and hearts by the river bank. The Serpent was the Naga. On its head was a crown. When destiny was being explained, these people by the River that wound and wound did not look at the stars but down to the Earth, as they searched the position of the Serpent.
It would not take long before those who had gone back to the mountain of Isarog were said to have requested that an image of the Virgin be made and be devoted for them infieles or infidels. A tiny image was carved out of santol tree. The eyes of the Virgin did not assume the Caucasian face of the conquering colonizers but retained the pili-shaped gaze of the indigene.
The Serpent was indigenous. The Virgin made herself a native, as well. The Serpent was moody and unpredictable. The Virgin was always calm even as jewels were made to cling around her.
The Naga, the Serpent, was feared and haunted the land; the Virgin was loved and was called “Ina.”
It is September once more. The second Friday will see the Virgin being transferred from the Basilica to the Cathedral. It is called Traslación. The Virgin would ride a carroza shaped like the Globe. You can read meanings from the shape of the vessel that would move the Earth as the Virgin Mother travels to a sacred spot where she would receive the faithful. But then, even faithless men are helpless before the Virgin. When the round Earth moves, the Virgin would be there at the center as men clamber up to touch Her. But the technology of this carroza would not allow the devotees to embrace and hug the Virgin, the Mother. The path to extreme believing is a slippery one.
Nine days of prayers will be said in that massive church. Then the River takes over once more.
A fluvial procession takes place on the third Saturday. As in the Traslación, women are not allowed to stay close to the Virgin, the Mother. If any woman, they say, is caught hitching a ride on the barge, then that boat bearing the Virgin would flounder and sink. The women are not complaining, for at the center is a woman. The men are also not complaining, because at the center is the Mother. Religion is never easy. After centuries of believing in the sacred and in the figure of a woman who was born without original sin, the origin of genders separated in the rituals for Ina remains a mystery. Or, perhaps, we do not want to examine the equivalent of inequality in the secular world, which the universe of the spirit ignores for the sake of the truth.
There is a greater mystery about the place of the Serpent and the Virgin Mother, and it is about a cruel King living in the Palace by the Other River. This King is afraid of any body of water. This King is also afraid of women and mothers. He is angry that a woman who scares him comes from a place that he believes is a hotbed of poisonous plants.
This cruel and dumb King has consulted his men and women how he can banish the woman who is his enemy. The woman called Blind Injustice whispered to the King a method:
Kill the Virgin Mother and resurrect the Serpent now hiding under the riverbed.
Whereupon the King’s men and women journeyed for nine days through forests and rivers, until they reach the settlement by the River. The fluvial procession was already underway when the King and his men and women attacked the procession. They threw a net around the Virgin Mother, but the crown of the Divine Nurturer ripped the net apart. The barge twisted around and around but soon found its bearing again.
The devotees scampered away. Those who were by the riverbank remained. They were praying hard and loud. A moan coming from the bowels of the Earth soon filled the air. It was loud and lonely. The river whirled and twirled. Then, without any sound at all, the huge tail of the Serpent curled hard and straight till it reached the low-flying clouds of September. The tail curled again and fell into the water. A dark wave came next with a wail. A mouth as big as the ancient crater of the sleeping Mount Isarog appeared from the river and swallowed the King, his men and women, including the priestess named Blind Injustice.
Then, with the river becoming placid once more, the Serpent disappeared to fulfill what He and the Virgin Mother have agreed many moons ago: that they would fight any kind of evil, because the Serpent in all of its ancientness is Good and the Virgin Mother in all of her silences is Wise.
And the King in all of his senselessness is dead and dumb.
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Image credits: Jimbo Albano