ATANG TI KARARUA

ILOKANO OFFERING FOR THE SOUL (DEAD)

     Do dead Ilokanos (their kararua or souls) come back nine days after leaving the world of the living and making their way to their kind of Lethe? Ilokanos believe in this concept and so they prepare food for  them as gesture for their brief return to the ancestral home. The food is in the form of linapet, patupat( rice cakes), baduya, and pop corn (busi) shaped like a small ball with the traditional molasses and thin fried slices of rice cake called pelais. The cakes are arranged on a table covered with white crocheted cloth and or white cloth embroidered  with sun and moon figures. After everything is ready and done, there is the long prayer for salvation and emancipation of the Ilokano souls.

     Of course, the cakes are eaten and distributed to participants and guests of the prayer vigil.

     Nota Bene: They say that the spirit (soul) is energy, deathless and indestructible. If the spirit did not immediately leave the body, a close friend of the dead man or woman can feel his or her presence; he could even hear his voice, calling him that he was going away from the world of the living. There are other worlds near us or about us. That spirit will go there until it eventually leaves for this world or lodges itself in the body of a woman or man.

A girl's watery grave: the story somewhere in Abel blog