Inshallah Montero: Reclaiming Filipineza | Shaping the Dream Landscape of the Filipina Immigrant

“Reclaiming Filipineza” is a project in collaboration with the Filipina immigrants living in Athens. I aim to create a video tapestry of their subconscious landscape with the information collected from their dreams at night. What are the recurring elements that appear in their subconscious mind? This dreamscape aims to deepen the understanding of their power and identity through knowledge of the dream work of our Filipino ancestors, the Babaylan.

A Greek dictionary from 1998 included the word “Filipineza”, which meant both a Filipina woman and a “maid”. The stark reality of educated Filipina women working as maids or nannies in the European continent is in contrast to the history of women in the Philippines. The Philippines is known to be a matriarchal society, where women held equal positions with men even before the Spanish colonized the islands in the 16th century. Women working abroad in countries like Greece are the breadwinners of their families. They are called “Overseas Filipino Workers” (OFWs) and have lifted their families out of poverty and contributed greatly to the Philippine economy. They are a superpower.

In pre-colonial times, Filipinas were trusted to be Babaylans. This role was mostly assumed by women in a community and was equal to the role of the male Datu or Chieftain. A Babaylan is a healer and priestess who serves as a medium of communication between the human and the spirit world. Women are believed to be more attuned to nature and the spirits around them because they are considered to be portals from the dream world to the real world by giving birth to life.

A Babaylan believes that people have twin souls. The first is Ginhawa, our breath of life, connected to our physical body. Kalag is the other, the astral soul of our being, overseeing our spiritual needs. When we sleep, it is said that Kalag travels out of our body into the spirit world, thus creating our dreams. Dreams usually carry messages from the gods or spirits.

“Reclaiming Filipineza” is a project I would like to create in collaboration with Filipina immigrants in Athens. Together we will carry out a dream journal workshop, piece together their journey in the spirit world, and create a dreamscape that shows us what elements are often repeated in their dreams and what hidden messages may lie behind them. Aiming to reveal how dreams might deepen our understanding of the Filipina diaspora, the dreamscapes will be turned into a digital video map, on which people will be able to see an actual landscape made up of fragmented and sensorial images pertaining to each element of the dreams.

FILIPINEZA as a healer, a priestess, and a mother

The matriarchal society of the ancestral Philippines was never colonized. Women have always kept families together and have led side by side with the chieftain of a village, as a ‘Babaylan,’ the healer and priestess. While the chieftain protected the community in the physical realm, the Babaylan, who was mostly a woman, protected the village in the spiritual realm.

When the Spanish came, they introduced Christianity and demonized the ‘Babaylan.’ They restructured how women should behave: an ‘Oriental decoration,’ demure and obedient. But the feminine spirit refused to be caged, and heroes like Teresa Magbanua and Gabriel Silang led revolutions against the Spanish Inquisition.

Then the Americans came, and they sold to us the image of the American dream. A woman staying home, cleaning the dishes, and waiting for her husband to come back from work. But the women didn’t stay back at home; they have always worked side by side with their husbands. This matriarchal culture led to the Philippines having the first female president in Asia in 1986.

I have always believed that this feminine strength within each Filipina stems from our history of recognizing the sacred energy of women in pre-colonial Philippines. The ‘Babaylan’ is deeply embedded in our roots, so much so that even in post-colonial times, its power manifests in the dreams and the physical realm of the Filipina immigrant.

The calling of the ‘Babaylan’ in post-colonial Philippines

In my search for dreams in Athens, I met the mothers who have ventured and risked everything they had to try to earn money abroad. They have left when their children were still babies, they have left when they were still 17, and they have left when their parents were sick and old. They were the ones who accepted the challenge of a hero’s journey, to bring education, healthcare, and housing to their families back home with their own money. From spiritual protectors in the past, they became the modern-day warriors.

But I was seeking traces of the ‘Babaylan’ within the Filipina immigrants through their dreams. Dreams in our ancestral wisdom were a bridge between the astral world and the physical world. They brought messages from spirits, gods, ancestors, or unknown energies from beyond. Dreams were their language and way of healing; they revealed cures, answers, and guidance.

In my conversations and interviews with them, I realized that a number of them had premonition dreams, some were about the unfolding of a future event and a call for their care:

• “She dreamt of a faceless lady next to her on the bus. The bus breaks down, and the faceless lady tells her that she is not feeling well… This dream from Teresita was a message from her former employer, who was in the hospital with a grave illness. Her employer was trying to reach her, but her phone was not working. After this dream, they were able to contact each other, and Teresita went to the hospital to be with her former employer, who was searching for her company. Teresita massaged her, bathed her, and told her stories while she lay in the hospital.”
• “The 22-year-old daughter of her employer appeared in her dreams and told her to take care of her baby. Two weeks after her dream, the daughter committed suicide.”
• “She dreamt of her daughter back in the Philippines, calling out to her and screaming, but no voice came out. Months later, she found out that her daughter was being abused by her uncle.”

There were also premonition dreams about illnesses and the passing of their friends and family back home:

• “Whenever she dreams of big waves and she is struggling to keep afloat, that means a person from her family would get sick in the following days.”
• “Whenever she dreamt of a group of people in a room, it would mean that one of these people would pass away soon.”
• “She often dreams of climbing the stairs of someone’s house. Inside, the table is always set with food, as if ready to welcome visitors. When she realizes whose house it is, the dream means that this person will soon get sick or pass away.”

These dreams have happened more than once in their life. One of the mothers even asked that their power be revoked because it is too heavy for her to carry. The Babaylan’s main rituals revolve around the funeral; maybe this is why their dreams revolve around loved ones passing away. Babaylan came from the Austronesian term ‘bali,’ which means ‘to walk with’; this is because their primary role is to make sure that the soul leaves the body in tranquility and facilitates a smooth transition pass to the afterlife.

The Dream Altar

During the Open Days, I crafted a dream altar that I put together with a video dream tapestry. I collated the dreams of the women and made them into prompts using AI. Once prompted, AI gives four video versions of the dream. It was interesting to see four different versions all alike but not the same. It reminded me of how it is to try to remember a dream; different versions of a scene are recalled and then fade away. I used this imagery, of four different versions of an image, and incorporated all versions into the tapestry to achieve this effect of recollection.

I made the altar to praise the power that exists inside the Filipina women working abroad. This power may be the ‘Babaylan,’ or being a mother, their sacrifice, their strength to pull their families from poverty, or the sacred feminine inside them. It was an altar for recognizing the beauty and strength within them, despite such harrowing circumstances they had to go through in life. Their spirit floats above the altar, swimming in the tapestry of dreams that tell the story of the world they drift to during the night.

I came to explore the dream landscape of the Filipina woman in Greece, but I discovered something more profound and spiritual, that the Babaylan’s power still truly lives in some of the women.

More questions appeared.

What happens to this power when it is not recognized? What happens to it when it is left unused? Or does distance, the space between homelands and loved ones, make the dream world even stronger?