Erica

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Vintage blue Togo lounge set

Maputo, 2017

Folk magic in the Phillipines part 2: The Orasyon protective tattoos.

To understand the mystical orasyon tattoos you have to go back to the folk belief of Anting-anting, which is the term for amulets and talismans. In phillipino folk belief, amulets have a preventive force against evil things, places and events, whereas talismans bring good luck. Anting-anting come in various materials like rocks and minerals, teeth and bone, bark of trees, strange roots of plants, seeds, shrunken animal parts , feathers, miniature icons, images of Jesus Christ and the Saints, oils, cloth, medals, prayers, prayer books, anagrams, codes in pieces of paper and tattoos.

An orasyon written on paper by a tambalan (healer) might be enclosed in a container by the owner and worn around the neck. In order to avoid losing the orasyon some people have it buried under the skin or tattooed on the skin and explains the existence of the orasyon tattoos. The codes and texts are a wild mix of spanish, vernacular tagalog dialect, latin, occult symbolism and sometimes straight up gibberish. Most of these images are taken from the photo blog of Sidney Snook and the info comes from the thesis Yunal: the orasyon tattoo as folk practice and art in Leyte.

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