Philippine Magic: A Course Catalog

I have a confession to make: I'm not a big Harry Potter fan. Oh, I read and enjoyed all the books (maybe except for Book 5), and watched all the movies (still think the 3rd was the best), but every time the story would try to present itself as being a worldwide magical conflict, I'd have to battle an urge to sigh. I just didn't see a lot of non-Western magical types/motifs represented in the Harry Potter world. As for specifically Philippine magic, yeah... no. While that's hardly surprising, that kind of thing still keeps me from truly immersing myself in that world, even if I found aspects of it very inviting, because it felt like a world that has no place for people from my neck of the woods. And that's a shame, because there's a rich diversity of magical practices in the Philippines.

So I've always thought about what a Philippine magical school might be like, one which used and taught magic in a way that magic has appeared in our culture, our old stories and urban legends. When I was asked to contribute to the first issue of LONTAR (https://lontarjournal.com/), I realized I didn't want to submit a story. What I wanted to do was imagine that Philippine school of magic, and in providing a list of courses that are taught within its hypothetical halls, give some insight into our own traditions of magic. It was a... much more daunting task than I'd originally anticipated, and in no way does the list I created even scratch the surface of the myriad magical traditions, ancient and modern, found in these islands. But it's a start.

(Cover image is tangentially related, an inforgraphic primer on Philippine sorcery by Mervin Malonzo and myself for Kwentillion.)