You remember our Sibika and Hekasi days back in gradeschool, wherein our forefathers (or mga ninuno) considered the trees, sun and anything with nature as gods and goddesses. They were even called anitos, if you guys remember. They even considered their king or queen (eck I forgot the Tagalog term for that) gods and goddesses and worshipped them like there was no tomorrow. Yep, paganism at its finest. Well thanks to 333 years of Spanish colonization, they introduced Christianity and faith & spirituality.... Filipinos recognized that God is the highest being of all, through the ages and civilization... and the rest is history.
Just this week, I read an article about Kumari-Devi... meaning living goddess in Nepal. My eyes widened and I said to myself "mah gosh! meron pa pala niyang mga ganyang goddesses in the 21st century ah!" Living goddesses??? And I thought that was back in the pre-Beowulf days... So I became more curious and googled on this living goddess. To my amusement, there were so many information about the Kumari goddesses.
With so many details about the Kumari goddess, I'll just place it in a nutshell. This has been a practice in Nepal, wherein girls at age 4-7 from the Sakya (most sacred place in the southern part of Tibet, pero like super near Nepal na and it's like a super good place to study Buddhism) community, with appropriate horoscope (heh? is there such a thing? weh!) are screened in the 32 attributes of perfection, including color of eyes, shape of teeth and even voice quality. They even take these girls to some scary and uber dark room to test their bravery and calmness. Who determines her "goddess-ship?" The Hindu-Buddhist monks.
So okay fine she passes the "goddess" test and will be a goddess to the people of Nepal but her "goddess-hood" will be concluded when she gets her period. So from goddess, human na siya! But if that goddess get unlucky, like if she gets some cuts, they will find another goddess. Some have commented that this is one way of Well what can I say, that's only in Nepal!
Going back to the article I read about this Kumari-Devi, she got herself a name: Sajani Shakya, 10 years old. Another surprise factor (aside from having living goddesses in this century) while reading the article was that she was stripped of her title as a living goddess!! Nyak ano ba toh!! Reason, she left Nepal to go to US. She did it to promote a British documentary about Nepalese living goddesses. Apparently, that's forbidden. Tsk tsk pasaway ba?? Hehehehe joke!
During her US trip. Mahilig siya sa kodakan!? May career in photography! Hehe!
Well, I felt bad for what happened. On the other hand, at least I learned something. At this modern day and age, wherein technology has been prevalent and way of lives have been changed, having living goddesses is still practiced in places like Nepal. Given these occurrences and events through the years, Nepalese peeps were able to maintain such unique tradition. They did not get affected to the waves of change but at the same time, they're contained to traditions that may be obsolete, pa-say or "what the?? ginagawa niyo pa ba yan??"
In the end, they still get to move on with their lives and are happy with things around them. No matter how high-tech the world has been or how other people criticize them, they can always say... "MAY DIYOSA KAMI UP TO NOW??? INGGIT KAYO??" Hahahahaha!!
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