- The story then takes our characters Lawrence, Joyce, Agnes and Caloy on a journey to the Babaylan apprentice's hometown to find definitive answers for their quest of knowledge and a possible solution to these visions. In their quest, they learned and immersed with an age-old culture that encompasses that of their own, opening new doors of understanding about themselves, their new roles in society, the world around them, and beyond.
- "Babaylan" narrates the story of an academic's pursuit for knowledge, his ancestral roots, and his quests to quell the call of the spirits that blazes from within. Inundated with various misconceptions and erroneous generalizations of the babaylan, Lawrence and his friend Caloy began to search answers elsewhere. They found shards of enlightenment from Leo, a youth leader and an advocate of Babaylanism, and his friend Joyce, a babaylan apprentice who seem to have a deeper and more definitive understanding of what a babaylan is from a cultural, historical and experiential perspective, but also struggling within herself in her search for true identity.
This initial engagement with Leo and Joyce however spurred a rash of visions that seem to traverse from both the physical and spiritual world, bringing to life heroes, beautiful maidens, gods, goddesses, deities and other supernatural beings as if they were alive in the right here and the right now, communicating and interacting with them. Sharing these visions, Lawrence would later understand from Joyce that the images they were seeing are similar to characters described in the Suguidanon epics of the Panay Bukidnon cultural communities.
The story then takes our characters Lawrence, Joyce, Caloy and Agnes on a journey to the babaylan apprentice's hometown to find definitive answers for their quest of knowledge and a possible solution to these visions. Like enchanted waves brushing across the sturdy hull of Biday nga Bulawan (boat of gold), Lawrence and Joyce continuously experience these visions as they learned more about the babaylan, the culture of the Panay Bukidnon community, and the Suguidanon.
Visions overwhelming both Lawrence and Joyce, an elderly babaylan and Joyce's trainer proceeded to conduct a complex healing ritual in a bid to help the couple, who at that time became more than just spectators of epic narratives - becoming part of the narratives themselves. In their quest, they learned more about the babaylan and immersed with an age-old culture that encompasses that of their own, opening new doors of understanding about themselves, their new roles in society, the world around them, and beyond.
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