His Royal Majesty Ampun Sultan Hadji Muedzul-Lail Tan Kiram, 35th Sultan of Sulu and North Borneo, Grand Sayyid of the Royal Order of the Pearl, Head of the Royal House of Sulu.

Some colonization gnosis

So one time, I was reading a thread on my FB Filipino Wiccan group about “family crests,” and someone who said that both their maternal/paternal sides have crests that were from Spain.

I pointed out that there’s most likely no point in trying to use post-colonial conquistador crests in pagan rituals, thanks to colonization and all.

And then I wrote a short tangent about the Filipino flag, copy/pasted here:

Like, in my experience, none of the Tagalog anito want anything to do with symbols like the Filipino flag, or the "Filipino sun." Not even Apolaki the actual sun-god, because the primordial "sun-spirit" before him was an oppressive jackass and that has nothing to do with Wikipedia's symbolism of "unity, freedom, people's democracy, and sovereignty." Apolaki himself actually rebuked the last pagan Tagalogs for converting to Christianity, so he's REALLY sore about the irony of modern Filipinos plastering the sun on all their stuff while ignoring him and the rest of the anito.

And I was thinking about SYMBOLISM and how Apolaki generally looks and acts like Everyone’s Awesome Kuya/Big-Brother, BUT he’s also prone to angry outbursts. Being a fire-god and all. He once told me, “FUCK THAT GODDAMN FLAG AND FUCK THAT GODDAMN SUN, THEY AREN’T EVEN USING OUR MEANING FOR IT.”

Apolaki is a pretty awesome deity, don’t get me wrong, but he also tends to aggravate my bitterness/anger, and I keep wondering if this is from colonization.

Meanwhile, most Filipinos are repulsed by crocodiles now, and Haik appears to me as a giant, dark-skinned, Jason-Momoa-looking guy with massive crocodile tattoos everywhere, but he is Very Soft(tm) and also pretty traumatized, thanks to his myths all being gone.

Crocodiles were dragons and usually powerful nature-spirits if not outright gods, being ASIAN dragons.

---

Note for March 2, 2020: Dang, this post has been sitting in my drafts for a year. I don’t know why I keep thinking about symbolism in relationship to the anito, but long story short, fuck colonization and how it screwed up our ancestors’ understanding of the world.

(Modern-day) Flag and Coat of arms of Minahasa

Beyond the eponymous archipelago, the Philippine sub-branch of the Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian languages has extended to the northern tip of Celebes/Sulawesi, in Indonesia: These speakers belonged to three ethnolinguistic groups: Sangirs, Minahasans and Gorontalos. In fact, in my current alternate history scenario (Mutia nan Katimuran, currently on indefenite hiatus), I dedicated a significant (and summarized) part of the events that happened in that tip of Celebes, most notably Minahasans and Gorontalos, as well as their relationship with their counterparts in the alternate pre-colonial Philippines (Sankapuluan in my scenario), specifically in southernmost Mindanao. 

For the post itself, while there is an OTL Minahasan coat of arms, its ATL counterpart had based little on it; in fact, the shield is the only common denominator between the two. The owl, a Minahasan cultural symbol, is served here as a crest (courtesy of Eugenio Hansen in Wikimedia Commons); underneath it is a torse/coronet of blue and white, which is shared by the Minahasan flag (actually a derivation by fellow AH.com member Enpingao of the file Coronet of a Knight (Portugal) by Gazilion);  meanwhile, the (modern-day) ATL Minahasan flag shared the basic red-and-blue variant of Senyera (aka Barça colors) with its OTL counterpart; the only difference is that I used a single nine-pointed star within a white triangle, symbolizing the nine Minahasan tribes.

Created and edited on MS Paint, Pixlr and Photoscape.

Two hundred nine.

In two years, 2019-2021, with the pandemic and the caregive, I finished all my book illustrations today, 12:06 PM, Sunday, 11 April 2021, all two hundred nine (209) of them

Maycapal: Philippine Mythopoeia. From the timelessness of the cloud archipelago to the Philippine Republic of 1946.

Here's to the anitos, diwatas, Indarapatra, to the babaylans, to Philippine flora and fauna, to myths, folklife and folklore, to the proud pre-conquest natives of the archipelago, to our Austronesian heritage, to the imagined Filipino and the Philippines!

To Thomas Bulfinch, to Edith Hamilton, to Hieronymus Bosch, to the early printers and typographers, to Cesare Ripa, to the medieval traditions brought by the holy orders, to renaissance humanists, heretics and alchemists.

To Francisco Balagtas, to Damian Domingo, to Jose Honorato Lozano, to Jose Rizal, Juan Luna and Felix R. Hidalgo.

To Gaiman, to Pullman, to Le Guin.

To semiotics, to Umberto Eco.

To archetypes, to Carl Jung.

To folklore, to Maximo D. Ramos, to E. Arsenio Manuel, to Damiana L. Eugenio.

To history, heraldry, comparative literature, religion and mythology.

To museums, archives, and libraries.

I owe to them my love of reading, drawing, and imagining.

Now to continue my writing!

IMAGE NFT: GOD-ARMOR LUMAWIG collectible https://rarible.com/token/0x60f80121c31a0d46b5279700f9df786054aa5ee5:645314:0xe236d526e1d08dbd8b6fd063fc36271818e71257? #rarible #ethereum #nonfungible #digitalasset #nft via @rariblecom

Galo Ocampo Self Portrait Philippines (1982) [Source], [Source]

Wikipedia says:

Galo B. Ocampo (16 October 1913 – 12 September 1985) was a Filipino artist. He was also the first Filipino to study heraldry and was a member of the International Institute of Genealogy and Heraldry in Madrid.

Ocampo was born in Santa Rita, Pampanga. In 1929, he studied Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines.

A modernist painter, he painted works such as the "Moro Dancer" and the "Igorot Dance". Among his paintings, the "Brown Madonna" garnered attention in 1938 because of its depiction of Jesus and Mary as non-Caucasian, brown Filipinos; It was also said to be "flat and two-dimensional".

Philippine banknote changes are afoot! I hope for the BSP rethink their design strategy of endangered fauna over heroic personages in the obverse. Diverse elements can always be seamlessly integrated if they belong in a coherent narrative. A banknote is a story in and of itself and not mere footnote of history.

It’s been eleven years since the inauguration of the Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas’ New Generation Currency Series of 2010. It is ideal to change the design of security features of bank notes after a decade or so to prevent counterfeiting. Please keep a copy of my medallic and numismatic design, the Order of Lakandula if you can. It is found on the 1000-peso banknote. I still got two 1000-peso notes with the Order of Lakandula image in circulation from the bank. I will keep them as design specimens, and do keep yours, too.

I was 27 years-old when Manuel ‘Manolo’ Quezon III tapped me to design for the national government back in 2002, under the Office of the Presidential Assistant for Historical Affairs which was under the Office of the President. It was fresh from receiving my second industry award for website design and development for the Lopez Museum and Library when he recruited me to collaborate with him on a life-changing project. To upgrade and contemporize the designs of the Republic and President/VP coats-of-arms and seals; which were originally designed by the great Galo B. Ocampo in 1946; and to design the medallic and numismatic requirements for a new civilian order for the country; which became one of the highest decorations of the nation, the Order of Lakandula. Among its conferments are to the Emperor of Japan Akihito (conferred by PNOY); the King Juan Carlos I and Crown Prince Felipe of Spain (conferred by PGMA); and the Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton (conferred by PNOY); and among others. It turned full circle when Captain Galo B. Ocampo (1913-1985) one of the great Triumvirates of Philippine Art (with Victor Edades and Botong Francisco) is conferred with the Order of Lakandula posthumously in 2015 in a ceremony at the National Museum of the Philippines presided by his current successor as museum director Hon. Jeremy Barns. The Filipino Historian Ambeth Ocampo is also a recipient of the Order of Lakandula.

The image of the Order of Lakandula is found as “Medal of Honor” in the one thousand-peso banknote of the Bangko Sentral Ng Pilipinas’ New Generation Currency series of 2010. It was the first national order to have its image featured in a Philippine banknote. Eventually deemed ‘mislabeled’ and also ‘out of context’ with the three featured heroes (Jose Abad Santos, Vicente Lim, Josefa Llanes Escoda, the heroes and martyrs of World War II) and thus the image of the medal was removed in 2017. The latest conferment of the Order of Lakandula was in 2019 by PPRD to Filipino Chinese Dr. Henry Lim Bon Liong, the President of the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry Inc.

It was a great honor, privilege, and experience having my design work included in the banknote for a long time before the banknote security design upgrade in 2017. But the Coat of Arms of the Republic of the Philippines found in all banknote denominations is that of my design.

My contributions to the national heraldry, medallic, and numismatic designs will be there for a long long time as it is mandated by law and in use by the Philippine Government for honor and protocol. Unless the laws are changed, or the existing form of government is changed, or if there will be a call for a plebiscite to change the symbols of the nation.