Ilocano 101: Atang—Honoring the dead

Photo: Gerald Farinas.

As an Ilocano person on this Halloween and lead up to All Saints Day (Nov. 1) and All Souls Day (Nov. 2), I offer my atang to the deceased.

Atang is an Ilocano tradition to leave food for our anito—ancestral and environmental spirits.

This act isn’t necessarily to feed the dead. Rather, it is a sign that we, on the living side of the invisible veil that separates us from the dead, remember and honor them.

It’s akin to leaving a place setting at the dining table for someone who has passed on.

While it is customary to leave rice and corn-based items as atang—from the most cultivated grains in the Ilocos—I left sweet rolls filled with ube placed on Philippine acacia wood this year.

The word anito has the same linguistic roots to the Hawaiian words atua or akua and kupua—spirits, guardians, and gods.

Ilocano is part of the same Austronesian language family as Hawaiian and other Polynesian languages.

Anitism, what this indigenous Ilocano faith tradition is now called, is one based on the idea that everything in nature has a spirit.

Furthermore, there is a larger spirit realm that exists parallel to ours. This is where the souls of the dead exist.

In ancient Ilocano tradition, effeminate men or transgender women (called bakla today) were held in high esteem as the people who had the closest relationship with that spirit realm. They were, in essence, mediums who could communicate beyond the veil of the living.

Those people became religious leaders and shamans, also known as baglan (where the word bakla comes from, according to anthropologist Martin F. Manalansan) or mang-alag or mang-ng-agas.

With the introduction of Catholicism to the Ilocos, many of these animist Anitism beliefs were folded into Christian ideas.

There now exists a syncretic faith tradition that weaves indigenous beliefs to Christianity, not too different from syncretic folk religions known as hoodoo and voodoo in the American South and Caribbean.

There is also a Protestant denomination that folds indigenous Anitism with French Spiritist ideas and Christianity. This body is known as the Union Espiritista Cristiana. With a significant Ilocano presence, Espiritistas believe in the ability to communicate with spirits to help the living.

Despite a Mormon faith, my grandmother had Espiritistas pray and sing over her body as part of her funeral rites.

This body is one of the most organized Spiritist denominations in the world.