Siquijor Black Saturday

This is the most interesting gathering I will ever experience in my life, I thought.

Morning found us back in the forests of San Antonio where herbal practitioners and mananambals from all over the country had assembled—as they did every year during Holy Week. Their unusual purpose: to replenish their supply of herbs and to brew sumpa, the panacea to cure people, deter spells and ward off spirits. Potions concocted on Black Saturday are supposedly the most potent since the power of other supernatural forces and spirits can be summoned with Christ temporarily dead.

Some were sorting herbs or chopping branches and roots. But the main crowd was gathered around a cauldron, watching the brew—which consisted of tree shavings, coconut oil, candle wax gathered from graves around the island, beehive, herbs and chipped fragment from church walls—simmer over smouldering firewood fanned by mountain breezes.

It was a no frills affair and everyone kept to himself. Once the sumpa had fully melted, the contents of the cauldron were distributed to all mananambals present; and one by one they retreated and disappeared back into their own lives. The whole event ended as quickly as it had begun.