The difference between being a Suruhana, Le'an, and using Atgimat

Although this subject would be perfect for Halloween, I've decided to go ahead and write something about these topics before fall as I have quite a few things coming up career wise that may sidetrack blogging. The topics of Suruhanu/as, being Le'an, and Atgimat aren't unfamiliar terms to those who have been raised with Chamorro culture and it is something that can be easily misunderstood by outsiders. From Ouija boards, tarot cards, to people desperately trying to reconnect themselves to Celtic culture through assumed Pagan rites, divination and shamanism are often immediately connected to "witchcraft." This is a common misconception by those who typically do not know what they're doing (i.e. learning divination and "spells" through reading books and watching movies on the subject). Such things from a Chamorro standpoint are definitely not recommended. Whether you've got a natural ability, an inclination towards the occult, or plain skepticism, the following is just for cultural information purposes only as spirituality can't simply be read or talked about. You really have to have the right stuff.

Suruhanus and Suruhanas are not witches, warlocks, druids, pagans, satanists, sorcerers, witch doctors, vampires, or anything of the sort. Medicine men/medicine women would most likely be the closest English translation in terms of description as being a Suruhanu/a is a specific role that involves extensive family guidance. Suruhanus/as don't tend to specialize in kakana or black magic, contrary to popular belief by outsiders looking in. Rather, these medicine people specialize in natural remedies and if you're lucky, they might even be le'an too. These abilities have to come through family in terms of medicine knowledge and the inherited ability to see spirits, a person's soul, and sometimes even the future. The photo you see above is my great-grandmother, Maria, who was a suruhana also known to be le'an. My grandmother, her daughter, picked up the herbalist knowledge but has a limited le'an intuition.

These things are generally not taught to just anyone or even someone who is interested in learning. These traditions are passed down through families and it's not intended to be merely exclusive, you just have to know the person learning very well to ensure a clear conscience and good intentions. There are not specific rituals to become a suruhanu/a, but to become a different type of "practitioner" who engages in curses and other means that interfere with others' lives, there is a certain rite of passage called ha'ilas which I'll discuss in the atgimat section. This is not a practice that is smiled upon, not because of silly labels, but for interfering directly in people's lives through spells, potions, and other unnatural means of involving yourself in another person's life. Although some practicing suruhanas on Saipan are friends with those who go the ha'ilas route, it is important to note that both types of people I've met mix these practices with Roman Catholicism. This is not only due to Spanish tradition, but it is meant for personal protection from harmful spirits either seeking to prevent one from doing good or binding themselves to people involved in kakana. Although the ha'ilas route is not as desirable for its interference and spells, you tend to not see judgment between the two different practitioners. A big difference between those of European/Western descent who practice natural healing or witchcraft who do tend to judge one another.

***************************************************************** Le'an is a term that is used in Chamorro to identify "psychic" capabilities. This is a separate topic from reading tarot cards and gazing into a crystal ball in case you were wondering. Usually someone who is le'an can have various abilities such as looking at a person and seeing their personality and/or future, seeing spirits or sensing their presence, and other clairvoyant abilities. Being le'an is believed to be an inherited trait and not something you can acquire or develop if you don't already have a small amount of this capacity. Sorry, no books at Barnes & Noble about clairvoyance or invoking spirits can make you le'an.
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Atgimat is still something that is still around and working as people still pay good money for this. In Lawrence Cunningham's "Ancient Chamorro Society", he discusses the use of kakana where casting a spell on someone consisted of taking a part of their body, whether it be hair or feces and mixing it with a concoction sure to make the person ill, afflicted with bad luck, or die a sooner death. Nowadays with centuries of Catholicism mixed with modern Chamorro culture, it is viewed as an unforgivable sin to take part in using atgimat or practicing kakana. Kakana tends to be mostly practiced by Carolinians and other Micronesian groups.

While many westerners tend to view making a deal with the devil or selling your soul as meeting some guy with a pointed tail, horns, and a pitchfork ready to get you to seal your fate on parchment paper with blood ink, this is not the case with Chamorros. Sealing your fate for an aftelife of hell has more to do with grudges or personally cursing someone through kakana. Whether it's for "love" (more like lust) or hate, one should never interfere with another person's soul.

Ways to protect oneself, as evident through religious influence, is to be a person of prayer and meditation, close to God. If someone lacks spiritual discipline, they put themselves at risk and are vulnerable to curses. Love potions, atgimat, are the more commonly purchased items in the Marianas by various groups looking to capture the attention of their object of desire, permanently. This usually runs a person about $300, the standard price for tricking your crush into unconditional adoration, but there is a great downside. If this potion works, the bewitched person will reportedly have difficulty maintaining eye contact with close loved ones and friends prior to the curse and in a few years the curse has to be repeated or else it will wear off and a reverse of the potion will take place, leaving the atgimat victim full of contempt for the love-sick perpetrator. Atgimat is administered much like the ancient Chamorro/Micronesian way of getting the target person's hair, nail clippings, or excrements and mixed with the potion or one can slip the potion into someone's food or drink.

As mentioned before, those who have gone through the ha'ilas process provide this service. But not all practitioners focus on these interfering spells. Some actually do a half-and-half with kakana and regular suruhanu/a amot. Yet whether it's an herbalist, a witchdoctor, someone who is le'an, or a combination of sorts, these three different and seemingly supernatural categories are good at identifying if you are gifted or cursed. The last thing you ever want to hear is "Makanayi hao!"

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Amot - Medicine

Atgimat - Curse, love potion/spell

Ha'ilas - Ceremony to become a witch doctor

Kakana - Black magic, voodoo

Le'an - Naturally gifted in psychic/clairvoyant ability

Makanayi hao - You've been cursed, Someone put a spell on you

Suruhana/Suruhanu - Healer, herbalist

Banzai Cliff Saipan Ghost

Is that someone jumping off the cliff or is it a ghost? Who knows?

This clip was taken by Japanese tourists visiting Saipan, CNMI

The Spirits of Guam

The jungle – and the flight line – can be a creepy place

by Tech. Sgt. Mark Kinkade

photos by Master Sgt. Lance Cheung

Senior Airman Jeannine Hattig talks to trees. More precisely, she asks trees for permission to pass when she heads into the jungles of Guam. It’s the respectful thing to do.

“I always ask for permission,” the Guam Air National Guard personnelist said. “I also ask forgiveness in the jungle for disturbing ‘them.’ ”

The “them” Hattig refers to are the Taotaomonas, the spirits of the long-dead first people who lived on Guam, well before Spanish explorers claimed the island for Spain. The Chamorros — the native people of Guam — believe the spirits of the ancients live in Banyan trees that flourish in the island’s jungles. When passing a Banyan tree, Chamorros ask for permission, as they might ask a parent or elder. If they don’t, the spirits might punish them.“People say they’ve come out of the jungles with bruises, or pinch marks,” said Hattig, who was born on Guam. “It’s never happened to me, but many people have told me about strange things happening in the jungle.”

Guam is a spiritual place where Chamorros believe in a vigorous spiritual presence melded with Catholic dogma taught by the earliest Spanish missionaries. Whatever their religious beliefs, many Chamorros still recognize the ancient superstitions as part of what Hattig called “hale-ta,” or “our roots.”

“It’s not that we believe the stories that there are spirits in those trees,” she said. “It’s more like it’s part of our culture, the way we do things. And you never know, right?”

If the Taotaomonas are the spirits of ancient elders who simply want respect, the Duendes are the mischievous Guam versions of leprechauns.

In the Onedera Store, a small Chamorro grocery not far from Andersen Air Force Base, Carmen Stiers and a handful of co-workers and customers recalled tales of tiny elf-like creatures that like to play tricks on adults — especially drunken adults — and play with children. They are pranksters with a mean streak.

“They are the ones children see, but adults usually don’t,” she said. “If you make them mad, they’ll shrink you and put you under a coconut, or so the story goes.”

Agnes Paguio, a worker in the store, said she has an uncle who has seen a Duendes, and a distant relative who claims the tiny human-like creatures snatched him away from his home one day. He was found the next day with scratch marks on his arms.

She also tells a story of a relative who was shrunken by the Duendes and imprisoned under a coconut. The relative can remember people looking for him, but he was too small to be seen.
Paguio knows the stories are the stuff of legends and superstitions. Still, she said, part of her hangs onto the beliefs.

“[The Duendes] are part of our culture,” she said. “We have learned [the legends] all our lives. We believe in God and the teachings of the church, but there’s a part of us that holds on to the old ways.”

The old ways and the modern world have combined to create spiritual myths of their own on the island. Many islanders know the story of the “White Lady,” a local legend of love lost and yearning.

Ask 10 Chamorros about the story, and you’ll hear surprisingly similar tales. In it, a mysterious woman in a ghostly white wedding dress or gown is seen near a bridge or on “Mystery Hill,” a long sloping hill near the capital of Hagatna. In most recountings, her fiance didn’t show up at the altar. In some tales, he jilted her. In others, he died in a car accident before the wedding. But most stories say she likes to push cars up the hill and peer in car and home windows.

Paguio said she has had personal experience with the White Lady.“I know as a child I saw a white figure running around a bush, but I never feared her,” she said. “A friend of mine said she was in her home one night and thought she heard her brother calling. When she looked out the window, she saw the face of a woman staring back at her.”

Jireena Blas, a customer service assistant at the War in the Pacific Memorial in Hagatna, said the White Lady has been seen by locals and military people alike. In 1978, two sailors in town for shore leave parked their Volkswagen van near a bridge and saw what they described as a “bride” walking near them. When they returned from a family picnic, they drove past the White Lady who stepped aside. Looking back, they noticed she was gone. When they parked the car later, they saw a series of scratches on the side of the car, like someone had run their nails along the paint.

“The weird thing was,” Blas said, “there were scratches on the [passenger side window] glass also, but you couldn’t feel them with your hands. There were marks, but no depressions.”
The spirits of Guam are not limited to Chamorro legend. In fact, the jungles that host the Taotaomonas and Duendes are also home to at least one ghostly presence at Andersen.

Call it a “fuels section legend,” or just another Guam ghost story, but there are people on the base who will swear an old aviation fuel pump house was haunted by the ghost of a dead pilot.

Staff Sgt. Larry Morrison, a fuels specialist, said the legend dates back to World War II when a bomber crashed on approach to the base. The plane plowed into a cliff that marks the north side of the base, just a few hundred yards from where Pump House 5 stood until about a year ago. The ghost, some said, would visit at night.

“We’ve had airmen working out there call for relief because they got so freaked out,” Morrison said. “It’s also been blown out of proportion. Some say it’s a ghost family, or a guy who killed his family. Stuff like that.”

Or it could be that Guam’s jungles are just naturally creepy. Before it was demolished during an upgrade to the fuels delivery system, Pump House 5 butted up next to very thick jungle. The vegetation grew around the facility, and people working at night usually worked alone.

“I just didn’t like House 5,” said Staff Sgt. Matt Whitman, also a fuels specialist. “The light up there didn’t work half the time. I’d hear stuff, and I’d constantly walk around the building checking it out. You can’t talk to anyone. All you have is a radio. It was a creepy place.”

Since the pump house was torn down, Morrison said he hasn’t heard any more stories about the pilot’s ghost. But “creepy places” still abound on Guam, and the spirits are active.

“This is a spiritual island,” said Onedera Store regular George Treltas, a Guam firefighter. “There will always be stories and legends about the jungles, the spirits and the people who have been here before. If one goes away, another will take its place. Besides, we’re good storytellers.”

http://www.af.mil/news/airman/1002/spirit.html

Chamorro Paranormal Terms - "The White Lady"

Alright, this is not a reference to Caucasian women whatsoever in case any of you are wondering :P This is a commonly used term to reference a particular type of ghost known in the Mariana Islands. There have been many accounts on the various islands of this specific ghost appearing in the form of a woman dressed in white that is considered to be, for the most part, an ominous sign.

While I was living in Guam, being both Chamorro and a military brat all in one, I often heard stories of the Maina Bridge (above) being haunted by a white lady of sorts. In this particular story, a woman was waiting for her fiancé who never arrived due to a tragic accident. Supposedly this woman, while alive, was so heartbroken that it took her to her own death. It is said that around nighttime she waits by the bridge and may be seen standing at the side of the road as if she were waiting for her fiancé and there have been accounts that she’ll appear in the car with you as you drive through that same road. If you’re a male traveling alone, you’re purportedly even more susceptible to a “visit” by the white lady on this road. In other accounts, it is said that she was a battered wife who drowned here and is known to be a shape-shifter.

In other accounts while living in the naval housing in Santa Rita called “Lockwood,” neighbors of ours would tell us of seeing a beautiful woman dressed in white walking around their homes at night. It was an interesting neighborhood and being that a lot of families who have lived there never experienced anything paranormal until living in that neighborhood. To those families who already believed in spirits, these frequent occurrences were still quite a surprise. Carla, a woman who lived down the street from us, told us that she would see this woman anytime she stepped outside at night to smoke. She didn’t make anything of it until she tried to peek around the corner of her house to see where this woman was headed as she always came and went in the same direction each night she saw her. When Carla peeked around the corner as the woman passed, she was gone. Needless to say, Carla didn’t care for those late night smokes as much as before. However, she did note that when this lady passed by, she seemed to have carried a particular smell that resembled a lemon or flowery scent.

As I’ve heard this type of story before told by relatives and friends, regardless of the white lady’s appearance, her pleasant scent and appearance seem to be the common factors in this type of sighting. The scent is actually closest identified to that of the ilang ilang tree that grows in the Marianas, which is commonly used in various cultures for perfume or forms of aromatherapy.

In other stories, she is said to lure men into the woods with her lovely scent and enchanting beauty only to have them disappear or found dead later. In few cases, she appears to children with the same purpose, but duendes seem to be a much more frequent apparition amongst children. It's difficult to pinpoint if the white lady was one person or several, but perhaps she's a type of ghost that is in constant mourning and seeking some sort of vengeance or fulfillment. Some say this type of spirit may never have been a person at all. Who knows?

Halloween Taotaomo'na Tales